Outrage as non league club fines player for being a dickhead

As any non league club chairman is well aware, it takes a great deal of sacrifice and financial juggling to keep a club outside the league afloat.

The best chairmen are always searching for new ways to balance the books including shirt sales, sponsorship, raffles, open days and garage sales.

One club however in England’s isolated north west has found a new way of raising income and some fans and the Players Union Guild (PUG) are not happy about some of the excuses that have been invented to fine players.

The list of offences, embossed on the club crest, has been exclusively obtained by Prost International after an inebriated defensive midfielder left it in a taxi outside Carlisle’s most exclusive and expensive restaurant, Bert’s Fish Bar (A Cod Piece in the Right Plaice).

The next passenger happened to be a freelance journalist who would do anything for money and sold it to us after four emails to the New York Times had gone unreturned and Al Jazeera didn’t answer the phone.

He also tried to sell the list back to the club involved, Carlisle City of Northern England’s EebaGum Northern League, but they had spent all their available budget on Mint Yoyos, a bargain at 50p for a bag of broken ones at the excellent McVities Outlet Store in Carlisle’s busy city centre. (They’ve also got Gold Bars. Yum)

At first glance, some of the offences on the Carlisle City list seem quite reasonable.

At the very top of the list,you can be fined £2 ($2.30 today  – but probably 60c by the time that upper class twit with a head like a school mop has ruined the economy) for turning up on match day with dirty boots.

That seems reasonable as does the £3 for being late to a match. You can also be fined for missing training.

But controversial City Chairman Brian Hall, who models himself on the great and feared Deadly Doug Ellis, wasn’t satisfied there.

In a series of offences listed on the fine list, you will find a fine of £1 for washing your dirty boots in the shower at a home game.

The penalty for doing so in an away dressing room is almost as severe at just a pound less.

The list of offences continues.

From the seemingly normal “Items Left in Changing Room”, the list broadens out to failing to attend a team social event at £1.

If however you do attend and spew your guts out you lose that £1.

The sole acceptable form of behaviour at the totalitarian northern club’s events is to show up but not throw up, something considered virtually impossible for City players whose vomiting skills are the yore of legend throughout Cumbria and the Borders.

One player, James Earl is so  famed for his skills in this area, that he became known around the village as the Puke of Earl. Even to this day, when he walks into a Carlisle pub, his drinks are on the house until they are on the floor.

You can be fined for:

• forgetting to bring the music if you are the Designated Music Man,

• using a cell phone during Coach James Nichols legendarily dull and interminable team talks,

• and consuming alcohol within 24 hours of kick off – or during Coach James Nichols legendarily dull and interminable team talks, just when it’s needed most.

That ban on alcohol consumption though is a cleverly woven trap as players will be fined for NOT coming to the bar after the match.  That offence is taken so seriously that the fine exceeds that for scoring an own goal, missing an open goal or the scandalous crime of wearing flip flops in the shower.

That’s not the end of the clothing faux pas (that’s French for fuck ups).

City’s outfielders are penalised for wearing gloves and the inscrutable Chairman Hall’s icy glower is even more Paddington Bear like for those who wear tights, an offence taken as serially as not showering or accidentally posting messages intended for your girlfriend in the team What’s App group.

Kyle Townsley is a versatile player but none of his teammates had any idea just how many positions he wanted to play in until he transgressed this law last November, costing him £1 as well as the undieing admiration of all the over 30s in the squad. He was only able to raise the money by selling off the twelve copies of the Kama Sutra his teammates turned up with at the next training session.

While some of this may seem light hearted and designed only to line Hall’s pockets, some of the more serious offences raise doubts about the fairness of the Carlisle City justice system.

Without doubt, the most controversial crime on the statute book is to be found guilty of being “Dickhead of the Week”.

This is not a crime that society lets you forget and has the highest rate of recidivism of any offence in Carlisle City criminal history with the exception of dodgy haircut, poor Elvis impersonations and putting your fat arse on the emergency exit row with the extra leg room on the team bus to Birtley yet again.

It’s a life of crime far easier to fall into than to escape, according to one legal expert:

“There’s only one way to avoid being Dickhead of the Week and that’s to be the man who decides who the Dickhead of the Week is.

“Luckily that’s me so I can be as big a dickhead as I want and never win it. It’s good to be king,” said Coach James Nichols as he munched on a Mint Yoyo.

Rob McCartney known popularly as the Hat Trick Hero is one of the few who has left this lifestyle of crime behind him. He looks back on his former life ruefully.

“Once you get sucked into the DOW lifestyle, it’s hard to break out of.

“You think you’ve done your time and can start a new life, but then you forget to wear your Dickhead of the Week top and that’s another criminal offence. You just get sucked back in.

“Rather like Kyle Townsley if that Whats App message is to be believed.”

Not much is known about the origins of the design of the Dickhead of the Week top but our crack investigative team have been able to trace changes in its design, which by and large has evolved as football fashion has changed.

In the diagram below, you can see the evolution of the Dickhead top that the unfortunate miscreant has been forced to wear despite the humiliation involved.

It is a humiliation that few who have ever worn it, feel they ever fully recover from.

The angst in the player’s voice was acute and genuine.

“It makes it worse that I’m a McCartney” said …. McCartney.

“There are photos of me wearing this, looking like a complete dickhead. I pray they will never be seen by my family. I worry about it everyday.

“I’ve been subject to a a few blackmail attempts by a rather tubby club kitman who I’d rather not name but so far I’ve been able to bribe him with Irn Bru, pies and Tunnocks caramel wafers.

“I live in fear.”

We tried to contact Chairman Hall about the persecution his players suffer under the justice system at Carlisle City but he was defiant. In an expletive ridden tirade, he spluttered:

“Can you speak up please? The line’s not very clear,” before adding,

“Where did you beeping get beeping list that from? When I find out who the beep beeping leaked that to you, you beeping beep, that Welsh beep’s job as goalkeeping coach is beeping done.

Then I’ll probably fine him. Also, are you satisfied with your current accountancy firm?”

Carlisle’s goalkeeping coach is from Wolverhampton (which, if you’re reading in the United States, isn’t in Wales.)

So the tyranny continues in the isolated Cumberland village.

We hope that shining some light on the plight of these players will provide some hope amid the terror.

If it doesn’t, we’re sure they’ll be just … fine.

See Also: The excellent brand new Carlisle City website