It would be interesting to know whether AFL coaches Dean Laidley, Mick Malthouse, John Worsfold et al are closet Three Stooges fans or even whether they have been known to crack a smile.
Fair dinkum, the 16 coaches by and large are a humourless lot, even allowing for Paul Roos whistling while he is making team changes on his magnet board.
Oh, how we miss Kevin Sheedy and his wise-cracks about Martians, the gulls overhead and, in general, his ability to laugh off any situation.
We all know that football is more important than life and death, but surely there must be times when a coach can crack a joke or give a semblance of a grin.
The last time I heard a coach other than Sheedy crack a joke was when Pluto was a pup – and that’s why we need someone like Ian Holloway.
Ian Holloway? You might not have heard of the man known in the Old Dart as “Olly”, but he is a living legend in English soccer, not necessarily for his coaching ability but for his outstanding sense of humour.
Holloway’s comments are so colourful that his best quips have been published in a book of what are known as “Ollyisms”.
Holloway, who has been manager of Bristol City, QPR and Leicester City, is now out of a job and fans are screaming for a club to employ him so as to hear his latest quips.
So here is a selection of “Ollyisms”, and here’s hoping some AFL coaches take the hint.
On an “ugly” win: “To put it in gentlemen’s terms if you’ve been out for a night and you’re looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they’re good looking and some weeks they’re not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird, but at least we got her in the taxi. She weren’t the best looking lady we ended up taking home, but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much.”
On a poor team: “If it was a chocolate bar, it would have licked itself.”
On his club’s potential: “I call us the orange club – because our future’s bright.”
On strikers (key forwards): “You can say that strikers are very much like postmen. They have to get in and out as quick as they can before the dog starts to have a go.”
On negative fans: “Most of our fans get behind us and are fantastic, but those who don’t should shut the hell up or they can come around to my house and I’ll fight them.”
(Maybe Holloway had read the Sydney Swans’ fan site redandwhiteonline.)
On a big win: “I’m going to enjoy this, take my brain out and stick it in an ice bucket.”
On how much he earned: “Not enough to go to brothels.”
On an unexpected win: “They say that every dog has his day and today is woof day. That might sound crazy, but I want to go and bark.”
On his team’s ability to come from behind: “We are the kind of team that will get back into the match if you do not kill us off. It’s like putting a snake in a bag. If you do not tie it up, it will wriggle free and bite you on the bum.”
On a run of poor form: “I feel so unlucky at the moment that if I fell into a barrow of boobs I’d come up sucking my thumb.”
On his then QPR team’s looks: “My lot are the ugliest team ever to have worn the blue and white hoops. We certainly don’t sell many calendars. In my playing days we had some right good looking bastards, but this lot are the worst I have ever seen. They all look like dogs.”
On the perseverance of one of his players: “He’ll chase paper bags in the wind in the park for you all day long.”
On how his wife described one of his QPR players as being good-looking: “I might have to get a QPR shirt with his name on it and wear it to bed to make sure she pays me some attention.”
On likening one of his players to a car: “He is my vintage Rolls-Royce. We polish him, look after him and I have him fine-tuned by my mechanics. We take good care of him because we have to drive him every day, not just save him for weddings.”
On another win: “I couldn’t be more chuffed if I was a badger at the start of mating season.”
And, finally, my favourite: “We were shit and the opposition also was shit, but they played their shit with more commitment.”
So there, Mick, Laids, Woosha, et al. Lighten up! Give us something!

JIM MAIN