Wounded Jaap stems tide of fiction

They don't half earn their money, those television and newspaper reporters who are given the task every year of coming up with April Fool sporting yarns. Truth is, sporting fiction is positively dull next to fact these days, so, short of announcing that Maurice Fitzgerald has defected from the Kingdom and will play for Cork in this year's football championship, nothing could surprise us.

Take these stories that appeared in the press on the first day of April. Fact or fiction?

The first, an exclusive on Football 365, an internet magazine, concerned a leaked document that revealed Arsenal have taken DNA samples from star players, such as Dennis Bergkamp, Nicolas Anelka and Emmanuel Petit, "in a bid to create the perfect' footballer". "After seeing British scientists clone a sheep last year, Gunners boss Arsene Wenger is now convinced that it is possible to build a team of genetically created world beaters," it was claimed. Don't know about you, but this story seemed perfectly plausible to me such is the barking mad nature of the football world these days. In fact, some would argue that certain members of the current Arsenal line-up have a genetically modified look about them already. Ray Parlour's hair-do, for example, simply looks like a dyed version of Dolly the Sheep's fleece.

It could work, I suppose, but what if the process went horribly wrong and you ended up with an amalgam of Bergkamp's fear of flying, Petit's disciplinary record and Anelka's less than chirpy outlook on life? A permanently suspended player who's not so good in the air and is usually in a huff is not, one suspects, quite what Wenger had in mind. The possibilities are endless, though, and so long as scientists didn't demand exorbitant cloning fees it could prove to be a great leveller in football. Imagine if, say, Cowdenbeath got their hands on DNA samples from Best, Beckenbauer, Cruyff and Puskas. The European Cup Final 2024? Cowdenbeath v Finn Harps, whose line-up would feature clones of Pele, Maradona, Platini and Roy of the Rovers. Meanwhile, Manchester United would be playing in the Unibond second division, having accidentally ended up with 11 David Mays following a test tube mix-up in their lab. Disappointing though it is, the story was, surprisingly, an April Fool's yarn. For now. If they can give lettuces personalities they can surely clone Nigel Winterburn.

Stay tuned. Next. Well, this one had to have been an April Fool. Surely. Snooker professional Dean Reynolds received a four-month jail sentence last month following his third (count them) drink-driving conviction. Unfortunately for Reynolds his stay at Morton Open Prison in Lincolnshire clashed with the qualifying rounds of the Embassy World Championships in Telford.

Except the prison authorities granted Reynolds special dispensation to play in the qualifying rounds, even though his sentence is not due to end until April 16th. There was still a problem, though. One of the conditions laid down by the prison authorities was that Reynolds would be subjected to a 7 p.m. curfew. No problem. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association wrote to them and explained that snooker keeps `unsocial hours'. Did the prison authorities reply by saying "tough"? Nope, they lifted the curfew and Reynolds set off for Telford. But this wasn't an April Fool. A humanitarian decision on the part of the prison authorities, one might argue, but you have to wonder if they'd give special dispensation to a convicted plumber to allow him sort out the faulty pipes of his customers. One thinks not. Then there was the story about player power being responsible for the resignation of the manager of Monaghan's Gaelic football team. The women's team, that is. Now I recall one particular Gaelic football coach telling me, not so long ago, that the best thing about coaching women, rather than the lads, is that "they do what they're told and never answer back - they accept everything you say". So, that being the case, this story had to be an April Fool's. Nope. Mmm, seems like the girls are beginning to answer back. No harm either.

Next. An amusing story reported everywhere on Thursday concerning Manchester United's Jaap Stam. The crack Dutch defender, as he is now called (having been the "crap Dutch defender" in the early part of the season), was off on international duty last week when, we were reliably informed (chuckle), "Holland assistant boss Johan Neeskens caught him in a crunching tackle in training, leaving Stam with ankle ligament damage just six days ahead of the crucial Champions League clash with Juventus". God, how I laughed. Did they really think we'd swallow a silly story like that? Huh! Stam's own Dutch assistant manager putting his hopes of playing against Juventus in jeopardy with a "crunching tackle" in a training kick-about? Ah, lads, c'mon. You'll have to do better than that.

But this story was true. No joke. Fact. Not fiction. Johan Neeskens? If scientists cloned you in the morning would they end up with someone who'd just had 500 billion lira deposited in their Amsterdam bank account by a citizen of Turin (wearing a black and white stripy shirt)? Or would they just end up with a right eejit? Answers on a postcard to Mr A Ferguson, Old Trafford, Manchester. There's no doubt, sporting fact is most definitely stranger than fiction.