When Andy Murray Was Stabbed by a Javelin. Almost.
I'm not sure what links Andy Murray with a javelin, Alan Curbishley and Robert Plant, but I know a man who does, and his name is Matthew Lorenzo...
3 Jul 2011, 21:12
Could have been painful...
Can’t name my sources but he might have been an athletics coach who was taking a session at Wimbledon College last week. The Great British hope was jogging round the track, loosening up. Happy with his workout, he stopped running halfway down the back straight. He walked towards the college gates, across the infield, and a tabloid headline away from a flying javelin. Never mind Haye’s broken toe, Murray would have had a real excuse if he’s been pierced by an errant lance. There you are: a 24 carat sporting scoop for Mr Dale on the birth of his new blog.
By the way he avoided all the other javelins and was only properly poleaxed by Nadal in the semi-final.
From tennis we move to football, rock music and a schoolboy dream realised….
I don’t know how many people know that Alan Curbishley’s brother Bill manages the Who and half of Led Zeppelin. Well I suppose a few more people know now. I have known Alan since his playing days at West Ham and Birmingham and others. He is now a successful, if resting, manager but he was at the helm at Upton Park when we struck up a conversation about music.
Alan didn’t seem too impressed that I was a big Zeppelin fan, or that I once lived in a RAF great coat and a pair of 28 inch loon pants.
Three months later the phone goes. “Matt, it’s Alan. I’ve got us four tickets for Page and Plant at Wembley.” Now my wife would rather go to the dentists than listen to two hours of heavy rock, and I think Mrs Curbishley feels much the same way. I, however, was in seventh heaven, and I remember getting distinctly excited when Curbs suggested we go backstage and meet the band. This was it: I was shuffling through the bowels of the Wembley Arena about to meet Robert Plant, rock god.
I was trying to think of the line that I could utter that he would laugh at and how ten minutes later we’d be bosom buddies and then I’d be joining him at some villa in Cap Ferrat for a month or so in the summer and… There he was. He was leaning against the dressing room door chatting to his girlfriend. The opening gambit was stuck in my throat as he looked up and in a broad Black Country accent declared: “I know you; you’re the bloke off the telly!”
We spent the next half an hour taking about his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers. He was angry that they’d never invited him into the directors’ box. Something about a shirt and tie. I suppose they might have done if they’d worked out he could probably match Sir Jack for Swiss bank accounts.
So that’s Curbs for you, football manager, friend of the stars and one of the few men in football who’ll actually ask you out for a night on the tiles.
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