Viet Nam News
by Paul Kennedy
The world is full of stupid people.
I’ve met a fair old few to say the least. I covered a court case once about identical twins, one who was in prison, the other not.
They came up with the bright idea of swapping places during a prison visit to allow the incarcerated one a weekend of freedom. Slight problem, he never returned leaving his brother stuck behind bars.
In the end they both got caught and probably ended up sharing a jail cell.
I also covered a story about a man who was sent to prison for smuggling a small amount of cannabis to Holland, where the drug is legal, and another narcotics smuggler who couldn’t understand why he kept setting the metal detector off at an airport security gate, only to release he had used metallic duct tape to strap the drugs to his body.
All of the above are pure numpties.
But this weekend I saw stupid taken to a whole new level.
Birmingham City took on their rivals Aston Villa in what’s known as the ‘Second City’ derby game.
Now I understand rivalry is an important factor in football. In fact it is crucial and makes the game what it is.
There is nothing wrong with holding a particular hatred for a neighbouring football team, I get that. And I’ve enjoyed many a time ribbing friends after a derby day victory, as well as being on the receiving end myself on more than one occasion, but not that often.
In Birmingham, England on Sunday one home team supporter decided to make a name for himself in the most ridiculous way possible.
Paul Mitchell is his name.
He’s a 21-year-old father of one, and I do worry about his child growing up with a role model dad like Paul.
This so called football fan came up with the bright idea to run onto the pitch during the game and punch the captain of Aston Villa, Jack Grealish.
Stop and think about that for a minute.
In front of thousands of people, watched by millions more on TV, this out and out plonker thought it would be a good idea 10 minutes into the match to enter the field of play and smack a player from the opposition team.
Surprise, surprise, Mitchell was caught and now faces criminal charges. I hope they throw the book at him, really hard.
But for me the real cherry on top of the icing already on the cake was that the player he smacked went on to have the last laugh.
Karma can be real bitch.
So Mitchell will probably lose his job, get sent to prison (hopefully), not see his son for a while and have a criminal conviction that will cause him no end of trouble in the future.
And to rub a big dollop of salt into the already gaping wound, his team lost by a goal to nil scored by the target of his rage.
If that’s not bad enough, later the same day during Arsenal’s victory over Manchester United, there was another similar incident.
Moments after Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s penalty had put Arsenal 2-0 ahead, idiot of the week 2.0 ran onto the pitch to celebrate, appearing to shove United’s Chris Smalling on the way.
Arsenal have rightly condemned his actions, apologised to United and Smalling, and said they plan to ban the individual responsible from attending football matches for life.
These actions are dangerous, unnecessary and absolutely stupid. It’s Neanderthal behavior at the highest, or rather lowest level.
But actually I really don’t think that is fair on cavemen. Cavemen worked out how to create fire, build homes, hunt and survive.
These two numbskulls couldn’t work out their anus from their lateral epicondyle.