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Your support makes all the difference.Mark Twain was right about golf being like "a good walk spoiled". There are some serious green issues involved, even if the spoils are plentiful. While Tiger Woods has been bulldozing his £23 million seaside paradise in Florida to replace it with a mansion that looks like a warehouse, Donald Trump has secured local permission to build a £1 billion course on 1,400 acres of sand dunes in Aberdeenshire which happen to be a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Meanwhile, in Sydney, the Warringhah club have had seen their greens ripped up by grub-hungry wood ducks which then excreted merrily. Now they are shooting them, prompting environmentalists to cause even more damage. Who will pick up the bill?
12
The number of players who scored for Bridlington U-13s when they beat Hutton Cranswick 24-0 in Hull, an FA record. Even the keeper bagged a hat-trick as they swapped positions. The previous best was eight when Preston beat Hyde Utd 26-0 in 1887.
Prodigious sons of the week
Zlatko Kranjcar will have been as proud as the dads of Bridlington after son Niko opened the scoring for Croatia, having given him his debut when he was the national coach. But extremely camp comedian Alan Carr says his father Graham, once a hardman at Northampton Town, is too "embarrassed" to go to his shows. Yet when Graham was a Manchester City scout, "Psycho" Stuart Pearce and very scary Joey Barton asked him for tickets. Now Alan has written a play about gay footballers for BBC Radio...
Good week for
Tony Henry, adopted by Croatia after singing about his large manhood instead of their national anthem... Sajid Mahmood, let off a £2,500 fine for failing to pay £50 after the cricketer was caught throwing a fag end out of his car. He doesn't smoke... Yvonne Buschbaum, German pole vaulter and European Championship double bronze medallist, who retires to pursue her long-cherished ambition to become a man.
Bad week for
Mike Tyson, jailed for just one day for drunk driving and drug possession, but forced to wear pink handcuffs and pants... Zorislav Srebric, chief executive of the Croatian FA, held on suspicion of stealing stationery from a shop at Gatwick airport... Robert Tustin, a referee banned for seven weeks for dropping his shorts in a women's rugby match – by a disciplinary committee chaired by Mr Richard Moon.
Closet hero of the week
British footballers may be rubbish but at least they can drive faster than anyone else. One in four has been caught speeding, with surgeons coming in a poor third place. And at least now we are best in Europe at shoplifting (as well as teenage pregnancy and CCTV coverage). But our greatest success this week came at the WorldSkills tournament in Tokyo, where Gary Tuddenham of Cumbria won a gold medal for cabinet making. Other British medallists were Jonathan Lloyd, with a bronze in car painting, and Simon Noble, with a bronze in autobody repair. Both of which could be useful for our footballers.
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