Flag-bearer fills hole on the line

Youssouf Mchangama manages to get a pass away before Kirk Millar can get to him during training in Portugal.

Matthew Chambers - on tour with Latics in Portugal

“DID you see their Bobby Charlton shirts?” chuckled Youssouf Mchangama after an odd postponement of the first scheduled game of the tour.

Athletic had been expecting to take on a young-looking local Portuguese outfit in old-fashioned kit at the Quarteira Stadium yesterday lunchtime, but a pitch inspection revealed a few horrors. Sizeable holes were present all across the field.

Athletic believed it wasn’t worth the risk of a player accidentally sticking his foot in one of the fairly well-disguised divots and potentially turning an ankle.

Officials at the ground offered to fill in the pitch’s 20-odd missing sections, but the choice was made to call the game off and train in the afternoon instead.

Privately, the feeling was that the change might have been a better option — he got to control exactly what work to put into the players instead.

There was also a spot of graft for this reporter, put to work running a line in the ridiculously hot conditions.

It was probably a blessing that Dickov took on refereeing duties. No ear-bashings over contentious decisions ensued, in spite of the manager’s encouragement of his players to get stuck into the debutant flag-waver.








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