What? Who? Eh?

I imagine Paul Cooke really enjoys setting the quiz in the Matchday programme.  Psychopaths are generally happy in their work.  When not wearing his numerous other Poppies hats, it is his job to set a few questions and show some images of old Poppies games and players for us all to ponder and argue over at halftime.  Assuming of course that your halftime isn't fully occupied with watching the substitutes go through a bored warm-up routine, or seeing 5-year old kids dispatch penalties of a quantity and quality our first team can only dream of.

In theory, the quiz in the programme should pleasantly pass a few minutes before the players trudge back onto the quagmire and battle is once again joined.

In reality, the quiz does nothing except make you wonder if you've ever seen the Poppies before.  Four decades of watching the Poppies, and too many years writing about them to safely recall without crying, do not help in the slightest when it comes to trying to answer Paul's questions.  I'm not sure that without the good lady offering several clues for every question, that I'd ever get one right!

And then yesterday.  The day Paul Cooke had his longest, loudest laugh at the rest of us who don't happen to have a room in our homes dedicated to Poppies statistics.  This photograph.....

Seriously?  Who the f*ck is that?  From his kit we know he played for us during the dark Non Park days, but after that.....The answer is (of course!) John Lesley Van Engel, who helped shepherd us through the tail end of our last Conference National season, amassing 114 minutes of action across 5 straight defeats (see - we can also hit the books!) as the chasm of footballing oblivion started opening beneath us.

Numerous footballing websites later and I can offer nothing else about Ooh Jonnie Engel.  As far as the Internet is concerned he played a few games for SVV Scheveningen in a pointless Dutch Cup, then joined us in 2012 for a month.  And then disappeared off the planet.  Or, he's still at the Poppies, depending on which websites you read!

Needless to say, we didn't guess John's identity at yesterday's game.  Our attempted answers included a prettied-up Moses Ashikodi, the guy who played "Jesus" in Madonna's "Like a Prayer" video, and Naomi Campbell.  All equally likely as the actual answer....