Top 10 Pompey stories - 10: Thats entertainment

In a week in which Pompey lost to an injury time winner, were offered a derisory sum by an average championship rival for two of our best young players, purchased a 23 yr old centre forward who having scored 3 times in 6 seasons as a professional spent nine months inside before Pompey promptly made him into a midfielder, were subject to yet another winding up order and were relying on, in this of all weeks, an Italian whose main business idea were semi-submerged cruise liners marketed as 'underwater' casinos or the lead singer of a washed up rock group who he didn't even front during their best years, I thought it might be an idea to attempt to remember some of the reasons we invest financially and emotionally in Portsmouth football club. These are not the stories of our title winning years or cup final reminiscence but our top ten favourite stories or myths involving our club, the things that generally only true fans would know or care about. So over the next ten days we will blog from ten to one, who knows by the time we are through maybe the future will be brighter for the blues!

Number 10. Now Thats entertainment

The match day entertainment at Fratton park has befitted our stadium, dated. I enjoyed laughing at my fellow fans as they stumbled around during dizzy and came up woefully short during the crossbar challenge. There was always the spectacle of the Pompey announcer trying, and inevitably failing to rouse the fans interest in some individual picking a box at random to be told they had hilariously won the booby prize of a Pompey calendar instead of the super grand prize which usually amounted to just shy of 20 quid or the awkwardness as 20,000 grown men watched the enthusiastic gyrations of prepubescent school girls in the guise of the ingeniously named Pompey belles cheer leading squad. But rarely, v rarely the halftime show conjures up more entertainment than the preceding three quarters of an hour. My memory of the details of this remain sketchy but during one of numerous great escapes from relegation to third flight football in the mid to late 90s one fresh faced youngster no more than 10 years old was on the pitch for some contrived reason or another, touch line Tony cheerily asked his name, age, where he came from before finishing with the equally benign 'whose your favourite player' scamp, without missing a beat replied with brutal honesty, 'no-one, they're all crap' I swear the cheer was as loud as when Pompey went two up vs Milan or Mendes volleyed our relegation worries further away. As the Jam might say,now that's entertainment.