Gary – an 8 foot tall ornament – dutifully welcomed visitors to a garden centre in Scotland for a decade before he was stolen last year. As you can see, he did his bit during the pandemic by wearing a face mask and has also been known to get into the Christmas spirit by donning a Santa hat.
Gary – well, most of him anyway, as the thieves had sawn a bit of him off – was reunited with his owner, a Mr Andrew Scott (not the guy who played Moriarty in Sherlock or the ‘hot priest’ in Fleabag), in March this year.
This truly bizarre crime feels uniquely British. As we know from Netflix, the US is full of incredible true crime stories that usually involve murder. Here, we get an 8ft Gorilla ornament nicked from the entrance to a garden centre.
It’s a story that has captured the imagination of one of my favourite bands, Blossoms. They have announced that their new album will be released in September and that it is named after our gorilla friend.
The band’s frontman, Tom Ogden, wrote the album’s title track about the story of Gary the Gorilla and used some of the lines from news reports about him in his lyrics. He mentions that ‘Mr. Scott hasn’t seen him since’ and the second verse goes like this:
I heard there’s been a breakthrough A registration plate His movements they were able to track But, you see, hе comes from a fairly extendеd family Don’t know how many brothers he has
This refers to an actual incident:
Blossoms also look like they had a lot of fun recording the two videos that we’ve seen so far from the album. The band have concoted a story where they are Gary’s captors – but they have been sent on a special mission by, er, Everton manager Sean Dyche. In the follow-up, Mr Scott appears to be played by Rick Astley!
All that’s left for you to do is watch the video and listen to the song. I think it’s great, I hope you do too.
We are now one week into Euro 2020 – and, yes, it is still called Euro 2020 despite being delayed a year by the pandemic. Probably because UEFA had spent millions on the branding for it. Anyway, with the intention of writing a weekly round up of what’s been going on at the summer festival of football, here we go.
Andrea Bocelli gets everyone in the mood on opening night
The tournament began on Friday night in Rome, where Italy played Turkey. The match was preceded by the opening ceremony, usually a dull and cringeworthy affair, but the tenor Andrea Bocelli superbly belted out ‘Nessun dorma’ while fireworks lit up the stadium around him and suddenly everyone was in the mood. Italy won 3-0, and backed it up with the same scoreline against Switzerland to mark their return to the major tournament stage having failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
Andrea Bocelli got Euro 2020 off to a bang in Rome
Christian Eriksen puts everything into perspective
On Saturday, Denmark played Finland in Copenhagen. I was mainly watching that match to see how Norwich’s Finnish striker Teemu Pukki was getting on, but surely before half time I saw things I will never forget. Danish midfielder Christian Eriksen, their most famous player and one of Tottenham’s best players before he left for Inter Milan last year, collapsed with no one near him. You can always tell when something bad has happened to a player on a football pitch, as the others on the field will react with shock and wave their arms towards the dugouts, pleading for the medical staff to hurry up.
Thanks to some rather insensitive camera work by the host broadcaster (that the BBC later had to apologise for, despite it not being their fault), I saw more of Eriksen’s plight than I wanted to. At one point I could see his face, eyes open but expressionless, and then the medics doing CPR on him. I was reminded of the time Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the pitch at White Hart Lane, a game I was watching with my Saturday night tea in 2012. I had to turn the TV off as I found it too upsetting. I then couldn’t think straight until I’d heard that Eriksen was awake and stable in hospital.
I’m not sure how, but the players managed to come back onto the field and complete the game. Finland won 1-0. Eriksen remains in hospital and it’s hard to imagine him playing professional football again.
Denmark’s shocked players form a human shield around their stricken teammate Christian Eriksen
Good start for the home nations… unless you’re Scottish
Wales were the first of the home nations to play in the tournament, drawing 1-1 with Switzerland in Baku on Saturday afternoon. Had Euro 2020 taken place when it was originally scheduled, the Welsh would have been managed by Manchester United legend Ryan Giggs – but he has been charged with assaulting two women and Robert Page is filling in, temporarily for now. It will take a lot for Wales to match the fairytale run to the semi-finals of five years ago but they already have one foot in the knockout stages after beating Turkey 2-0 in their second game.
England got their campaign underway with a 1-0 win over Croatia at Wembley, who had beaten them in the World Cup semi-finals three years ago. There’s a fair amount of optimism around Gareth Southgate’s side but questions remain about their ability to handle the big games.
Raheem Sterling scored the only goal of the game as England beat Croatia
Scotland haven’t played at a major tournament since the 1998 World Cup and the excitement was palpable going into their opener against Czech Republic in Glasgow, but a 2-0 defeat – the second goal coming from the halfway line – brought them back down to earth. Their next game is on Friday night against England.
The Dutch entertain and Mbappe sends a warning
The most entertaining game of the first week was without a doubt the Netherlands beating Ukraine 3-2 in Amsterdam. The Dutch were 2-0 up and seemingly cruising, but a stunning strike by West Ham’s Andriy Yarmolenko sparked a Ukraine comback only for right back Denzel Dumfries to win it for the Netherlands late on. Similar to Italy, the Oranje have been absent from major tournaments for a while (in their case seven years) and are keen to make the most of being back on the big stage.
Group H is this tournament’s ‘group of death’, containing both the current world champions France and European champions Portugal alongside Germany and Hungary. France met Germany in the first heavyweight clash on Tuesday night. France won 1-0 thanks to a Mats Hummels own goal, but Kylian Mbappe had a goal disallowed for offside and was also denied an assist by VAR. The 22-year-old looks set to take on the title of ‘world’s best player’ once Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo retire and his performance was a warning to the opposition of what’s to come.
Carrow Road stands empty as we wait for yet another international break to end.
It’s Sunday afternoon. Football fans should be watching the final stages of the first ‘Super Sunday’ game on Sky, ready for the next one at 4pm. They should be reading the papers analyse and discuss the events of Saturday’s matches. They should be setting their PVRs to record Match of the Day 2 on.
But they’re not – for this is a weekend hand-crafted by the devil. It’s a weekend that comes along just as the football season is getting into its stride. This is the dreaded international break.
As Norwich City fans, we tend to be pretty proud when one of our players is called up by their country. Until recently it was a pretty rare occurrence, so we would send them on their way wishing them to go and show what talent Norwich had in their ranks. As well as hoping they wouldn’t get injured.
I thought I’d take a look at a City team from ten years ago, to see how many internationals we had then, and compare that to the eleven that lost to Leicester last Saturday.
On 1st October 2005, Norwich beat Brighton 3-1 at the Withdean Stadium. The Canaries were getting back into life in the Championship after Premier League relegation, and lined up that day like this:
Robert Green
Jürgen Colin
Gary Doherty
Calum Davenport
Adam Drury
Dean Marney
Youssef Safri
Andy Hughes
Paul McVeigh
Darren Huckerby
Kevin Lisbie
Substitutes: Darren Ward, Jim Brennan, Ian Henderson, Simon Charlton, Craig Fleming
Goalkeeper Robert Green is best known for his embarrassing error against the USA in the opening game of the 2010 World Cup. He made his England debut against Colombia a few months before this Brighton match, becoming only the sixth Canary to play for England. He was set to go to the Germany World Cup in 2006 but ruptured his groin in a B international against Belarus. He was sold to West Ham shortly afterwards and the rest of his 12 caps came elsewhere.
Robert Green. Oh Robert.
Gary Doherty – aka the Ginger Pele – made 34 appearances for the Republic of Ireland. Strange as it may seem but Doherty was mostly played as a striker by the Republic, while he obviously found a home at centre half for Norwich. His last international cap came in 2005.
The most capped international in the City side that day was midfielder Youssef Safri, who played 77 times for Morocco, including games at the 2004 African Cup of Nations, where his team made it to the final. Safri will be remembered by Norwich fans for doing this in a Premier League match against Newcastle:
Paul McVeigh played 20 times for Northern Ireland over six years, Kevin Lisbie has 10 Jamaica caps to his name, and among the substitutes at the Withdean, goalkeeper Darren Ward made 5 appearances for Wales and Jim Brennan 49 for Canada.
That was it – a total of 207 international caps and most of those for British or Irish nations and the smaller footballing countries. Now let’s remind ourselves of the Norwich City team from last Saturday:
John Ruddy
Steven Whittaker
Russell Martin
Sebastien Bassong
Robbie Brady
Jonny Howson
Alex Tettey
Graham Dorrans
Matt Jarvis
Wes Hoolahan
Cameron Jerome
Substitutes: Declan Rudd, Dieumerci Mbokani, Kyle Lafferty, Nathan Redmond, Martin Olsson, Ryan Bennett, Gary O’Neil
Kyle Laffery struggles to get into the Norwich team but has top scored for Northern Ireland as they qualified for Euro 2016.
This squad has nearly 250 international appearances between them from as many as 12 different players. Overall, this shows how much things have changed for Norwich City in the last decade – and these players have been doing well for their nations too. Wes Hoolahan was man of the match for the Republic of Ireland as they beat Germany on Thursday – a game Robbie Brady also played in. Kyle Laffery is the top scorer in Northern Ireland’s European qualifiers, Dieumerci Mbokani scored for DR Congo and Alex Tettey scored for Norway against Malta last night.
I hope you’ve found this an interesting look at how Norwich’s representation of the international stage has changed in the last 10 years – and I hope it’s made this awful international break that little bit more bearable.
LEE PAYNE 