1) Remember former Arsenal midfielder Conor Henderson? Probably not as he only played one FA Cup game for them, admittedly in a 5-0 win over Leyton Orient, before spells at Hull City, Crawley Town, Grimsby Town and Eastbourne Borough. Well the English-born midielder has only gone and scored a 94th minute winner for his current club FC Pirin Blagoevgrad against the also superbly named Cherno More Varna. As injury-time winners go, a free-kick in off the bar isn’t a bad way to pick up the points for a team at the wrong end of the Bulgarian ‘First Professional Football League’ (we didn’t come up with the name), as proved by the excitable celebrations from the midfielder and his giddy team-mates.
2) American football is getting weirder by the week. Following on from the mystery of the disappearing USC player, The Buffallo Bills’ Zay Jones defies physics and floats back to his feet in the NFL match against Kansas City Chiefs. We’ve watched this numerous times and still can’t understand what’s going on.
3) Fifty-five hardy souls braved temperatures of -30c to compete in the Antarctic Ice Marathon, which takes place 600 miles from the south pole. The winner, Frank Johansen from Denmark, skipped through the ice and snow wearing thermal layers while intermittently stopping for hot food and drink, in a very respectable three hours and 37 minutes.
4) South Yorkshire is not famed for its November sunshine so goalkeeper Felix Wiedwald could be forgiven for not taking a cap with him for Leeds’s trip to Barnsley on Saturday. The German goalkeeper’s squinting and using his hand as a makeshift visor was not sufficient in stopping the sun’s rays, so rather than summon the kitman, Wiedwald turned to the travelling Leeds fans from where he was given a plain black cap to ensure the shiny thing in the sky troubled him no more. To make things better Leeds won the game 2-0 and Wiedwald returned the cap to his new friend and gave him his goalkeeper jersey, too.
5) The second Ashes Test starts on Saturday in Adelaide, a ground that has been a less unhappy hunting ground for England than some Australian venues in recent times. Take 2010, for example, when Kevin Pietersen’s sparkling double-hundred laid the groundwork for a comprehensive innings victory. Different times. There have been some English horror stories though, none more painful from a tourists’ perspective than their slow-motion crash on day five in 2006 at the hands of a Shane Warne-inspired Australia. Though Mitchell Johnson’s evisceration of England four years ago lives in the memory too. Going further back, it was an Adelaide Ashes Test where the bodyline controversy was at its most heated. Here’s some hot Larwood-on-Australia action from 1932
6) David Thornhill just went to watch his beloved Norwich City play Preston but the Canaries fan was forced into action as an emergency fourth official after an injury to an assistant referee. Mr Thornhill was offered a shiny jacket and then received the rare pleasure of holding up the board to show there would be 10 extra minutes added on, another rare feat, although it was ironically caused by the original injury suffered by the match official.
1) 147 alert! Almost.
2) German youth league player does cocky commando-roll dummy before free-kick … continues run … scores.
3) Wrestling referees are the best.
Spotters’ badges: LeeWall, TheCorporal, whobroughtoranges, per7