Jason Mcateer!

[ESG]

 

In all the fuss over Roy Keane's latest dive off the deep end, haven't we forgotten someone?

 

The man who was on the receiving end of Keane's elbow in Saturday's bad-tempered 1-1 draw at Sunderland? The man who, quite brilliantly,responded to He Of The Bulging Vein's on-field jibes by mimicking writing

them all down in a book? The man who, in the wake of Keano's sacking from Ireland's World Cup camp, revealed that the departed skipper had taken to gnomic utterances like "fail to prepare; prepare to fail" and "only dead fish go with the flow"?

We're talking about the man who said he'd rather read a Bob The Builder book than Keane's autobiography. The man who then joked that the Irish camp were planning a whip-round to buy one copy of the tome "so we don't make Roy any richer than he is already". And, ironically, the man who replaced Keane as captain when Ireland played last.

Step forward Jason McAteer* and these are among the other highlights of your brilliant career so far.

 

1) After dumping Jase, former girlfriend Donna Air told an interviewer, "I wouldn't date any more footballers - they're not the brightest of people."

Which is saying something as Donna is famous for once asking brother-and-sisters bodhran botherers The Corrs how they met.

 

2) On spotting another famous face in a Dublin nightclub, Jason decided to make the star feel welcome by yelling out a catchphrase he would naturally

be familiar with. What snooker's Jimmy White made of the sudden cry "One hundred and eighty!" is sadly not recorded.

 

3) Jason's nickname is Trigger, after the Only Fools And Horses character ("If it's a girl, they're gonna call it Rose, after Del's mum. And if it's a boy, they're gonna call it Rodney, after Dave"). This caused problems when he first arrived at Liverpool as Rob Jones, then regarded as the least cerebral player at Anfield, already owned the name. In recognition of his

superior claim, however, McAteer was later christened 'Double Trigger'.

 

4) According to former Blackburn team-mates, Jason's greatest moment came on a squad night out to an Italian restaurant. Asked by the waitress whether he

wanted his pizza cut up into eighths, McAteer is alleged to have replied, "Nah, I'm not that hungry * just cut it into four."

 

5) In another possibly apocryphal (that means it might be made up, Jason) story, McAteer is reckoned to have asked a Liverpool team-mate what to put in the space marked 'Position In Company' on a credit card application form.

According to legend, the source of McAteer's confusion was that "I'm a central midfielder but the boss is playing me at right wing-back."

 

6) Jason is a keen gourmet. After Ireland qualified for the second stage of the 1994 World Cup finals, he spent the night eating Chicken McNuggets while sitting on the bonnet of a stretch limousine in New York's Times Square in the company of U2 bassist Adam Clayton. Among his happiest memories of first club Bolton are "getting out on my own and going down to Tesco to buy my

favourite biscuits". Jason also believes Gerard Houllier's biggest mistake at Liverpool has been ordering the players to abandon their morning ritual

of eating toast before training.

 

7) Many cruel folk have suggested that Jason doesn't know much at all. But according to the voiceover on his bewildering 1998 Head And Shoulders advert, "Jason knows he can have it all". In this case, "it all" appeared to involve soaping himself homoerotically with the well-known salve for the flaky-scalped. L'Oreal hawker David Ginola was said to be "not losing much

sleep" over our boy's performance.

 

8) Jason calls his best friend "a deep thinker* he could easily be a news reporter". Jason's best friend is Phil Babb.

 

9) Ireland's otherwise unremarkable World Cup warmup match against Sanfreece Hiroshima was memorable for two things: a dreadful late foul upon our hero by Tulio and Jason's subsequent assessment of his injury, picked up expertly by Sky's pitchside microphones for broadcast to the watching millions back home: "My knee's f***ed! My knee's f***ed!" Needless to say, it wasn't.

 

10) Ireland team-mate Ian Harte says: "The other week Jason gave a Ralph Lauren polo shirt to his mum to wash and those shirts are longer at the back than at the front. His mum didn't spot this until after she'd washed it, thought she'd shrunk the front, and so cut the back to make both sides equal. He says that's where he gets his stupidity from."