FURTHER FOOTBALL FIGHTING

I'm pleased to report that we're not the only side to end up brawling on a pre-season tour. Sure, ours was just as embarrassing but it's always nice to know that we're not the only side that can't control themselves abroad. To be fair, this lot are a little more hardcore than our little spat at the home of Ferreiras as players definitely hit the floor early doors in this video. And to be fair, these guys had the brains to get their camera phones out - something we failed spectacularly to do. Still, had the Albion v Portimonense fight had been this boisterous then we may well have put our beers down and caught it on camera. In fact, the pictures we have of our 'fight' are largely diminished by this footage.

The clubs involved in the video are Calgiari from Sardinia and Bastia, who hail from Corsica - neighbouring islands but different countries, the former Italian, the latter French. We're more like Bastia if you like - they were 3-0 down at the time and at least this match made it to the 75th minute. The best bit is the seeming chatter that takes place between the player wearing a pink bib and the crowd towards the end of the film.

Anyway, this got us all dewy eyed about the Algarve so imagine our excitement when some of our Portuguese holiday snaps came through. This is the first one and you can see Gus right in the thick of it, encouraging all substitutes from both sides to think that a venture onto the field of play was allowed. Anyway, we have an issue out in a week so I don't wanna show you all the best photees. Instead, I'll leave you with this one - in it you can see one of the funniest things about the whole affair and that's the random fat bloke with a striped shirt right in the middle of the picture. Who he was, nobody is quite sure but I'm sure we can all establish that he wasn't a player. 

For more hilarious images of a quite extraordinary finish to a game, you'll be able to find some in TSLR021 - that will be available at the Swindon match and almost all other matches throughout August and early September. And it'll still only be £1.