Spandex skivvies, bad hair, and an impressive clothesline tackle. For a few minutes on Monday, an English soccer pitch turned into a WWE ring.
Midway through a tie game between Dorchester Town and Havant & Waterlooville, play was interrupted by a pseudo-streaker in a curly black wig and a neon green, Borat-style, mankini. After the nearly nude man had made a few laps around the field, weaving lazily between players, security finally got around to chasing him. They couldn't catch him straight away but did manage to steer him like some strange, stray cattle, toward midfield.
When the intruder au naturel got near Dorchester's Ashley Vickers, the player-manager decided to take care of the situation himself. Vickers grabbed the mankini'd man by the neck area, dragging him to the ground with a jerk. The tackle was textbook WWE -- I half-expected the streaker to retaliate with the ol' folding-chair-to-the-head move. But alas, the bare-butted Borat was no match for the pair of security men who grabbed him by the arms as he adjusted the coverage on his twig and berries.
All appeared to be right with the world, as security led the unclothed intruder off the pitch and a player from Havant & Waterlooville tossed his dislodged wig at him on his way out. But then, in a move that neither side saw coming, ref David Spain (no relation to yours truly) served Vickers a red card for his heroic trespasser tackle.
Not only was Vickers unfairly punished for putting a stop to the streaker's charade, his team went on to lose the match 3-1.
"I'm dumbfounded and speechless," Vickers told The Dorset Echo after the game. "My only thought was to get hold of him so we could get on with the game. I managed to grab him and bring him to the ground, and the funny thing was the stewards actually thanked me for it. But the ref decided to send me off and it beggars belief."
Even though the rules state that a player must be dismissed for any violent conduct on the field, Spain should have allowed Vickers to stay in the game. Not only did he stop the Borat in the buff from further delaying play, he also did it in a totally kickass, totally Triple H kinda way. If the hundreds in the crowd were privy to a few less moments of the streaker's pale, pinched posterior, then Vickers had done a service to them all.
