Pompey, play up!

J.L. Carr, that fine English writer, teacher, sports-lover and eccentric, once wrote a book called How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup. It was about a village team which eventually got through to the Cup Final, beating Glasgow Rangers at Wembley. It sold a couple of thousand copies and was eventually remaindered, though Carr later republished it under his own imprint, the pleasingly named Quince Tree Press. It’s a pity Carr’s not still around to do justice to beleaguered, bankrupt, wrecked Portsmouth’s improbable march to Wembley.

I was very struck by a remark of Pompey’s much-maligned coach Avram Grant after the semi-final last weekend against Spurs. The players, he said, weren’t fit, and some couldn’t have lasted 120 minutes, but ‘they gave something from their hearts’. And he’s right: it is the heart that wins it, and probably one reason why Manchester United are so strangely uninspiring now without their huge-hearted dray-horse of a hero, Wayne Rooney.