Random, I know....

As we head into today's vital fixture it may seem an odd time for such a random thought to occur, but surely when random thoughts strike they need to be aired as soon as possible?  Or they just become "thoughts".  Bear with me.

We had a couple of young mascots at last Monday's final home game with Alfreton, where we'd obviously decided that watering the pitch with only one game to go wasn't economically viable.  The mascots were  introduced over the tannoy.  I wasn't entirely paying attention to their names, genders or schools attended.  But my ear caught that one of the kids gave their favourite players as Mr Kettering Gary Stohrer and the Liverpool star Terence Trent D'arby.  I think the other mascot named their faves as ace net minder Jackson Smith, angry troll Jordan Crawford and Fulhm's 1930's sounding player - Harry Wilson.

This is something we're used to at our level.  Most people have a "big team" who's fortunes we follow with varying degrees of interest.  You can often deduce someone's age by which "big club" they follow.  My second team of choice are the tricky trees of Nottingham Forest, so if you guessed my affinity stemmed from the late 1970's you wouldn't be far off.  Co-Patgodee PW dons the old gold of Wolverhampton Wanderers during his down time, suggesting that even though we attended school together in the 1980's he was in fact born in the 1940's....

By logical extension all Poppies supporting Leicester fans can trace their support back fully 6 years, and we shouldn't have any Tottenham fans in our ranks at all.....

Having finished my fishing trip....back to the thrust of this article.  We are used to world class players, and Harry Wilson, being mentioned in the same breathe as our more modest stars, but does the reverse ever happen?

Has a young mascot being applauded onto the pitch at Old Trafford ever named Ronaldo and Altrincham's John King as their favourite players to a chorus of befuddled confusion?  Not that this would happen of course, as everyone hated John King, but you know what I mean.

Would the mascot at, say, Chelsea be strong-armed into changing Welling's Nigel Ransom for Didier Drogba before their favourite players were announced to a sparsely populated Stamford Bridge?

Part of me would absolutely LOVE this to have happened at some point, if only to jolt top division fans into the uncomfortable realisation that football actually exists outside of the annual borefest of trying to qualify for the laughably named "Champions League".  So, if you are a young mascot, about to run out at a Premier League game today AND reading this (!) do me the most enormous favour and casually drop into your favourite players list Roy Clayton, Brett Solkhon or even Kyle Perry.  Do it.  It'll make you feel better!

"Who the f*ck is Johnny Graham?"