Spot the Luger: The Chairman claims he was never in the former Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw
THE KENNA League has been accused of taking a ‘back of a fag packet’ approach in the wake of a cup results controversy.
On Tuesday Kenna HQ published aggregate scores of the Canesten Combi Cup quarter finals which were immediately called into question.
Sporting Lesbian were initially believed to have beaten Just Put Carles after their match at The Gash. It now appears that result was wrong and JPC will progress.
The Spartak Mogadishu manager also claims that his team had no chance of beating Northern Monkeys. Both goal counts are to be reviewed.
The league has come under severe criticism surrounding the matter, with the Chairman’s official visit to Poland pinpointed as the reason for the oversight.
Rumours abound that instead of attending to Kenna business the Chairman was making ‘guess where I am’ phone calls to his mates from the duty office of the former Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw.
“You can shine a desk lamp in my face and kick me in the knackers with a jackboot, but I’ll keep telling you the same story: what with eating a strange mixture of cabbage and pickled herring at mealtimes, and drinking myriad shots, I’ve had my hands full,” said the Chairman, who isn’t any less of a man for discovering a taste for quince vodka.
“You must appreciate that I’ve had no access to Microsoft Excel for a week, something the Headless Chickens manager will understand, and when I return to Kenna HQ all will be resolved.
“Right now I’ve got three more days of Poles giggling as I attempt to communicate with them in their native tongue.”
Russia blood to the head: A Bramble own goal wasn’t enough to knock his own team out the cup (Photo courtesy of the England 2018 bid)
TITUS BRAMBLE lived up to his Kenna reputation by scoring an own goal, but it wasn’t enough to stop his team from progressing to the semi finals of the Canesten Combi Cup.
Spartak Mogadishu took a first-leg lead home to win a close-fought battle with Northern Monkeys in the Somali capital on aggregate.
“Yarrrrr! That yellow-bellied scoundrel Bramble will be feelin’ the tip o’ me cutlass in training this week,” said the Pirates boss suggestively of his haphazard defender.
A draw in Mogadishu was a good result for Northern Monkeys, particularly given security fears that Islamic extremists Al Shabaab may target the fixture.
The Northern Monkeys manager said: “We covercame home-grown terrorists, a crumbling infrastructure, high unemployment and a lack of decent plumbing to make it this far in life only to be undone by an unlucky first leg.”
Spartak will face FC Testiculadew in the semis after, as predicted on these very pages last week, Dimitar Berbatov and Loic Remy helped poach a win from a two-goal deficit.
In the other semi, Still Don’t Know Yet trounced Vasco De Beauvoir to set up a tie with the untouchable Sporting Lesbian.
The Still Don’t Know Yet manager said: “When a van load of heavvies in balaclavas kidnapped James Collins from the team hotel in August I vowed revenge on the league, and to knock the Chairman’s team out of the cup is sweet revenge.”
Asked by media to respond to this claim at a press conference, the Chairman fumed: “Why can’t you vultures just leave these allegations alone? I will only talk about football.
“There is no hard evidence linking me to the Collins affair, far-right political groups in Italy or the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.”
Protection: Northern Monkeys will have a bodyguard for their away trip to Spartak Mogadishu (photo courtesy of Jessica Hatcher)
EIGHT managers will be eating their eggs with a little more anxiety than usual this Easter weekend as their teams head out in the final leg of the cup quarter finals.
As Sporting Lesbian run away with the league, the Canesten Combi Cup increasingly represents the only chance to get some silverware this season.
Who will progress? Who will end up with egg on their face? For each tie the Kenna makes predictions weaker than the puns in this post.
A vital, first-leg away goal for Still Don’t Know Yet will make this a tough trip for Vasco, and the relegation strugglers from De Beauvoir will hope Robin van Persie’s goal drought continues.
The league leaders are in assured form carrying two away goals into the second leg, and are the bookies’ favourites to take this all the way having scored 15 more goals than any other club this season.
JPC’s Le Fondre, Maloney, Henderson, Osman and Silva are less likely to find the net.
Prediction: Plenty of mouth-watering action with Lesbians coming on top.
One of the toughest away trips in the calendar. Northern Monkeys will have to overcome a lead, away goals and Al Shabaab pot shots from nearby rooftops.
The good news is that Monkeys striker Edin Dzeko has good experience in this field, having grown up in 90s Sarajevo.
Prediction: Monkeys fail to scramble it in the Horn of Africa.
Cup holders Testiculadew have their work cut out to overturn this tie, but Dynamo only just scraped through the last 16 and can sometimes rely a little too heavily on Carlos Tevez.
Prediction: Remy and Berbatov poach it for the tactial Brambler.
FOR MANY Englishmen the Germany 2006 World Cup was a rude awakening.
In the build up to the tournament expectancy filled the air, and the airwaves. Everyone was telling us that this was England’s chance. The Golden Generation.
“Look at our players. Just look! They’re all playing for top clubs reaching the latter stages of the Champions League.”
“They’ve knighted Geoff Hurst! This must be an omen, because he beat the Germans in an era we can’t remember and from which we’ve never watched a full game, just the same clips over and over again.”
“All the World Cup winners since 1966 form a mathematical sequence that is completed only if England win in Germany. I’m not saying it’s in the bag, but by thunder it’s our best chance for years!”
Such were the sentiments fanning the flames of hope.
As with any tournament it all ended with tears for the English, and that was the moment most Kenna managers should have realised that no matter how many ‘years of hurt’ they’d undergone mediocrity should just be accepted.
Looking back now, the 90s – two semi-final finishes and a roller coaster of a game against Argentina in Massif Central – were the pinnacle of England’s international endeavour since lifting the Jules Rimet, but as managers assembled in the One Tun near Goodge Street tube station for the 2006-07 season’s auction in early August, the memory of that Madeirense eyelid movement on a field in the Ruhr still cut deep.
Most expensive summer signings
1
T Henry
£36.5m
Tourette’s Allstars
2
A Shevchenko
£35.5m
Tourette’s Allstars
3
W Rooney
£34m
Fat Ladies
4
S Gerrard
£29m
Thieving Magpies
5
J Terry
£28.5m
Fat Ladies
The auction became a morality play. Footballers were merited on their performance in Germany rather than their week-in, week-out trade at club level.
Widely vilified for failing to find the net in the World Cup, Frank Lampard went for a paltry £18m to Thieving Magpies despite being one of the domestic game’s top performers the season previous.
On his Kenna debut the FC Gun Show manager, noted for his pragmatism, loose morals and Hackett socks, cleaned up.
As he bought diving Drogba for £5m, Berbatov for £18m and the anti-christ himself Cristiano Ronaldo for £22m, the rest of the league guffawed at the folly.
Green: Manager of the Month, Red: Turkey of the Month
The Portuguese went on to enjoy a three-season reign of majestic dominance in the Kenna, and helped FC Gun Show become the second ever manager to win the league.
His three star players aside, only one other of the FC Gun Show manager’s original eleven chalked up over 100 points – Stewart Downing.
Thieving Magpies came second, although at the time their inability to do better was touted as further evidence that Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard can’t ‘dovetail’ in midfield.
Defending champions Vasco De Beauvoir could only muster third place, but were consoled by winning the inaugural Canesten Combi Cup competition, beating 120 Checkout in the final by 34 points to 19.
The Kenna’s first ever female manager bumped right into the glass ceiling. Building a team around Ricardo Vaz Te was held at fault, rather than gender issues.
Every manager learnt two important lessons that August night in Fitzrovia: no one wins the Kenna buying players they like and the One Tun is not a good auction venue.
They also discovered that the Kidderminster Harriers squad possessed more Premier League winners medals (one) than the Liverpool squad. And so the Stuart Watkiss League was renamed to become the Jeff Kenna.
Which is why the Chairman cuts a lonely figure in the photo above. Having made it half way up a red run, he spent 20 agonising minutes being severely punished for his vainglorious, ‘how hard can it be’ attempt to ski. Forced to abandon, he was rewarded with the long and awkward journey back to the bottom, and for posterity snapped by the Greendale Rockets manager from the smug comfort of a chairlift.
No stranger to ignominy on the slopes, the Chairman said afterwards: “It wasn’t as bad as the trip to Chamonix a few years ago. I’ll never go snowboarding in jeans again.”
Bright lights: Despite the charms of Paris Kenna suits remain unconvinced by the French
FRANCE have been refused rights to a Kenna franchise after delegates deemed Paris ‘just not suitable’.
A Gallic consortium hoping to bring the world’s best format of fantasy football to the Continent were told their country wouldn’t be ready for at least a few years.
Speaking to L’Equipe after a quick crêpe on the Champs-Élysées, Kenna suits explained their decision to snub ‘Le Jeff’.
“I paid a king’s ransom to wander round some dimly-lit rooms staring at young women in the buff, but when in Paris one must visit the Louvre,” quipped the Chairman, once he’d scrubbed every trace of the stamp for Pussy’s nightclub from his wrist.
“Joking aside, these cheese eating surrender monkeys now have a good standard of football in Ligue Uhhhne, and we’ve long since forgiven their poor taste in stonewashed jeans and floppy mullets, but the truth is the conditions we’ve seen in Paris are just not suitable.
“I went to a pub where they were showing football and ordered a beer. Not only was I served the shabbiest pint since records began, but the waitress kept a straight face while charging me 11 Euros. 11 Euros! Am I supposed to be paying Zlatan’s wages?
“The slow table service and expensive lager means this city cannot, I repeat cannot, be trusted to allow 20 managers to bid for their teams at auction.”
The news comes as a big blow to the French capital after they lost out to London on their bid to host the 2012 Games.
Le Kenna: French forms of common league phrases
La Folie Anglaise – 4-4-2, the prescriptive formation of all Kenna League teams.
Hôtel de Jeff – Kenna HQ, where the organs of league business are based.
Le nuit des boissons vigoureux – auction night, the pre-season event in August where 20 managers buy their teams. Held in the pub.
Le chef du chaos – the auctioneer, who sells players at the pre-season event.
La Coupe de la Chatte Mal – the Canesten Combi Cup, knock-out tournament run during the season.
Hors de combat – injured, commonly murmured by competitors to undermine a manager’s confidence in the player he’s just bought.
Le Bramble stratégique – tactical Brambling, the pernicious act of deliberately trying to trigger a Titus Bramble forfeit to gain a financial advantage late in the auction.
Le Maillot Merde – the Bramble jersey, worn by the last-placed manager at auction and transfer nights.
La fenêtre de chance – transfer window, event held twice a season where players can be bought and sold.
L’Absenteé – the Still Don’t Know Yet goalkeeper Drusille Ngako, who absconded from the Cameroon Olympic women’s football team during London 2012 and hasn’t been seen since. The name can also refer to Still Don’t Know Yet defender Anton Ferdinand.
Le Corsaire d’Afrique – the Spartak Mogadishu manager.
Le Comte de Fléchettes – the Newington Reds manager, who bears a remarkable resemblance to professional darts player Ted ‘The Count’ Hankey.
THE CORRIDORS of Kenna HQ have long echoed with reverence for five seconds of Mel Gibson in 1989, but the bubble has sadly burst.
A closing shutter door to the league’s underground executive car park prompted a YouTube search for a remembered gem from Lethal Weapon 2.
The film features two veteran homicide detectives with terrifically well-managed hair fighting the evil spectre of South African Apartheid, which takes the form of snappily-dressed diplomats with clipped accents, automatic weapons and equally high-maintainence bonces.
In one scene madcap martial arts expert Martin Riggs, played by Gibson, enters a restricted area at the South African consulate by rolling underneath a closing shutter door without breaking stride. A true masterclass.
Unable to find the extract posted on YouTube, the Kenna HQ LoveFilm account was pressed into service and a DVD of the film hired for that purpose.
Zeut alors! Upon closer examination it was found that what was previously thought to be an unbridled display of letter-jacketed panache turned out to be two camera shots neatly spliced together.
“A two-minute silence will be observed before every fixture this weekend,” read a missive from Kenna HQ.
19th hole: The Chairman and former Dan Terry Seduction manager enjoy a well-earned drink
NOT MANY can endure the constant pressure of top level football management for long, and the Kenna League is no exception.
For every Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and Vasco De Beauvoir manager there are countless others who have passed on from the game to other arenas in which their skills are more suited.
One such example is the former Dan Terry Seduction manager, who readers of these pages will last recall steering the club to relegation in 2012 after a disastrous campaign in which he failed to woo players, the board or even a young journalist.
But whereas reports of his failed effort to slip a roofy to a girl from the local newspaper stretched credulity, the former DTS manager’s present crusade of villainy at a pay-and-play golf club in middle England is more than plausible.
“All the members act like it’s some exclusive club but they miss one point: they’re all sh1t at golf,” he explained during a round with the Kenna chairman on Monday, confirming common knowledge that most amateur golf club members’ enthusiasm for dress code and etiquette far outweigh their prowess on the course.
Retiring from the Kenna last summer, the former DTS boss relocated to Worcestershire to immediately begin his full-time campaign of terror midway through a competitive round.
With one parent on the committee and the other a popular member, particularly in the bar, the ex-Kenna man managed to wipe out his own respectability in one swoop by driving the ball over the heads of the group in front. A fourball that included the club pro.
As the angry scratch golfer marched 250 yards back up the fairway to deliver a furious, expletive-filled tirade, the former DTS boss heeded advice and kept his counsel. But far from being chastened by the experience, the out-of-work manager responded the only way he knew how: by taking the incident as an invitation to start leaving his car in the club pro’s reserved parking space.
“As part of my membership I get a free hour lesson with the club pro, but neither of us wants me to take that one up!” joked the former DTS manager as he produced a scrunched up voucher for a free 18-hole round.
His notoriety secured, the former Seduction boss turned his singular charm to that most sacred of clubhouse property – the notice board.
Eager to get some more competitions under his belt, weather permitting, he signed up for a contest on one condition. An asterix next to his scribbled name directed administrators to the bottom of the sheet to find: ‘*unless it’s snowing in which case I’ll stay in bed’.
Accosted by a senior lady member laster the day, the fairweather golfer was told that under no circumstances was he to deface club property in such a fashion. To the cheeky wag this was yet another chink in their armour.
Fans of 90s Canadian comedy TV show The Kids in the Hall will remember a sketch in which a balaclava-clad athlete with a catchy alias promises only to reveal his true identity once he climbs, ultimately unsuccessfully, to the top of a leisure centre squash ladder.
Taking inspiration from the show, but betrayed by his membership number, the former DTS boss received a curt phone call from a club apparatchik the day after signing up for the next competition and informed that it was not considered club etiquette to call himself ‘The Eradicator’.
So what’s next for the ex-Kenna man?
“I’ve thrown a couple of rounds with the old man to get my handicap up, so in the next Stableford contest I’ll romp home with 70 points. Who cares? It’s not exactly the Belfry,” he said.
Last 16 cup results (aggregate)
Vasco De Beauvoir 3 – 0 Headless Chickens
Still Don’t Know Yet 3 – 1 Piedmonte
PSV Mornington 0 – 2 Just Put Carles
Woking 1 – 2 Sporting Lesbian
Greendale Rockets 0 – 2 Northern Monkeys
Hairy Fadjeetas 1 – 2 Spartak Mogadishu
Dynamo Charlton 1 – 1 Pikey Scum (Dynamo go through on most points scored in second leg)
Shooter: Sporting Lesbian have scored 11 more goals than the next highest club this season
THE CASUAL Kenna manager must be hoping for some kind of Oscar Pistorius turn of fortune to beset Messrs Suarez and Aguero.
The Sporting Lesbian duo are fast leaving the rest of league behind. Chasing managers are wondering why their midnight trip to the John is being interrupted by the sound of a strange padding noise outside their bathroom door.
Chipping in with a paltry two appearance points, Maynor Figueroa was the only other Sporting man to contribute this week, but still the side outperformed all but one other.
No stranger to automatic weapons himself, Anders Breivik lookalike the Judean Peoples’ Front manager made his team’s case for a place in Europe as Jose Enrique and Ashley Cole both put in strong showings.
At the bottom Woking slipped even further away from safety. The manager’s competence has already been doubted by the highest authorities. How long until the club has their very own Night of the Short Blades?
Space just outside heaven: Managers attending the August auction may need to kiss the chairman’s ring
THE KENNA League chairman has thrown his funny hat in the ring to become the next Pope.
The Catholic Church was left in the hunt for a new leader yesterday after Benedict XVI became the first pontiff in 600 years to resign.
Despite not being a cardinal or even a Catholic, the Kenna chairman, who was recognised in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list to become Sir Nimrod Rodgers-Boyce, claims he has the perfect credentials for the job.
He said: “The Vatican may have a following of 1.2bn compared to our smaller league membership [of 20], but the issues are the same. Most of my flock freely engage in intimate pre-marital relations, and if the stories are true a few of them enjoy going bareback with strangers too.”
Asked how he’d tackle the high-profile issue of child abuse in the church that dogged the last incumbent’s papacy, Rodgers-Boyce said his in-depth knowledge of the Kenna League’s draconian forfeit process – the Titus Bramble ruling – would more than prepare him for the role.
“During my eight years in charge a lot more people than just Kenna managers officially complained after forcibly having their pants pulled down by Titus Bramble.”
The Vatican are yet to comment.
Cup scores – Last 16 first leg
Five teams picked up crucial away goals, including Hairy Fadjeetas on a precarious visit to the Horn of Africa.
The second leg will take place on 26 February.
Kenna HQ has produced a gnatty wallchart to keep track of the latest cup developments. Download your free copy from The Rub on the right hand side of the page.
