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Ian Holloway Speaks To The Nation

Sport // Jim // 1st December 2006

Too much media training in football these days. All the post match interviews are boring as anything, it's all "Well the three points is the most important thing", "At the end of the day that extra bit of quality told", or even "Smithy's put in a great cross and I've manged to get on the end of it." Yawn.

There is the occaisonal rogue in the pack:

• Ferguson sometinmes has his post match snifter a bit early and starts releasing the Glasweigan expletives on Sky.
• Big fat racist Ron Atkinson (although officially not funny anymore) once said of a linesman "I know where he should have put his flag up, and he'd have got plenty of help."
• Comic legend Gordon Strachan, who always had a sarcy line no matter how badly Cov had got stuffed that weekend, e.g. "At tiimes in the second half, we sank so low I felt like Captain Nemo."

The absolute king of the post match media scrum is Plymouth manager Ian Holloway. Armed with a south-west accent and a complete disregard for sensible answers, he dishes out all sorts of eccentric responses to the dull questions that he gets asked by footy journo's. His finest hour is probably the interview where he compared a scruffy QPR win to a night out on the pull, almost surreal in it's brilliance, you can watch it on YouTube here.

Further quotes have been collected together on a Wikipedia page, the product of a mind touched by genius. Take this motivational example: "I don't see the problem with footballers taking their shirts off after scoring a goal? They enjoy it and the young ladies enjoy it too. I suppose thats one of the main reasons women come to football games, to see the young men take their shirts off. Of course they'd have to go and watch another game because my lads are as ugly as sin."