Burnley FC - 25 Years of The London Clarets - the Modern Pentathlon

Date: 25 January 2001
Event 1: AGM Pub Crawl (the hurdles)
Number of athletes: 14

Welcome friends old and new to this temporary revival of the still legendary Fantasy Drinking League©. What better way could we celebrate our illustrious club's silver anniversary than by staging a new drinking competition? So, for this and the next two issues only, welcome to the contest where pints mean points, where you can't fail if you stick to the ale and the one who drinks the most beer gets the biggest cheer. Welcome, indeed, to the Modern Pentathlon. So called, because there are a quintet of drinking events. There's the drunken ramble around London of the AGM venues crawl, of which more anon. You have the visit to the sacred source of Moorhouse's award-winning Burnley brewery. Then the main event comes in the form of the star-studded Parliamentary lunch - and remember, it's only a proper lunch if it lasts all day. The end is in sight by the time we spend what promises to be a senior weekend in the delightful city of Norwich. Finally, as if all this itself is not enough, the Modern Pentathlon will head North of the border, where the finishing tape will be stretched across the Royal Mile in what will be, in every possible way, a very long weekend.

Who will breast that tape the first? Who's going to produce the pint-sinking performance of a lifetime, and who's going to get found out when the pressure's on? Who will finish bottom of the heap? In the coming months, these questions and more may well be answered. For now, let's look back to that first event.

An extremely experienced field turned out for this gruelling event, with some key London Clarets cognoscenti amongst the competitors. On a long and packed night in bust London town, performances proved to be of a very high standard, with only one or two athletes letting themselves down. Notes on individual performances follow.

A wholehearted and committed performance from the big man. A lot of that's muscle - drinking muscle. He was quick out of the blocks, and you could tell he'd taken his preparation seriously. As the photo elsewhere in this magazine proves, he even gave his all to finish off the food single-handedly when most had faltered.

Good sound start, but veering towards incoherence by the evening's end. Blow is one of four competitors docked points for cheating at one point in the evening. Two groups of competitors held a race by tube and bus between two hurdles - but this mob promptly sneaked round the corner and hailed a cab. Cozzo, Firmo and Parko are the other miscreants.

A reliable and hard-working performance from one of the veteran athletes. Bottwood has nothing to prove, but drank like he did anyway.

Good throughout, but has to lose points for neglecting to pick up his bag from the next to last hurdle, which has to be the equivalent of dropping the baton. Amazingly, the bag was still there when he returned much later. Tailed off at the end, being distracted by unsuccessfully trying to chat up a woman of uncertain East European origin.

We had high hopes for the Heads, but his mind simply wasn't on the job. Where was the concentration? If he actually got off the phone for more than thirty seconds and concentrated on getting his lips around a pint, he would have punched his weight.

It was a reasonably solid performance from the boy Hego, albeit not quite in his imperial pomp, and he ran out of steam somewhat towards the end. Struck exactly the same pose on all photographs taken that night, for reasons still unclear.

The gravel-voiced veteran put in a competitive and determined performance. Hard to knock, and Lote even managed to get out of the door without sustaining too many bruises.

Stuck at the task and didn’t let himself down. McManus rose to the occasion in some illustrious company. Sturdy.

Some good, no-nonsense Yorkshire stuff from the William Hague lookalike, but that severe bout of hiccups between the last two hurdles cost him dear. Oddly, his hiccups went as soon as he got to the pub. Left his big, thick, Virgin plastic wineglass-style spectacles at home, thankfully.

High quality drinking throughout. At times like a man possessed. Can you fault him? Shame about those dropped taxi points, though.

Although a talented athlete in qualifying, Pepper must be heavily penalised for missing the first hurdle completely. Sure, he strived to recover, but he didn't complete the course, and that has to cost him.

A tremendously disappointing non-performance from one of the athletes most expected to impress. Where was he? Smith missed all hurdles bar the last, and although he did his best there, it was sadly too little, too late.

Solid throughout, and consistency personified. He was one of the handful to stay in the Sekforde to the death, even thoughtfully trying to help with the cleaning.

Position	Athlete	Points
1	Benny	987
2	Woody	943
3	Parko	899
4	Hego	898
5	Firmo	841
6	Cozzo	790
7	Jeff B	789
8	Joe L	701
9	Dave Mc	9
10	Patrick	582
11	Heads	431
12	Bob B	416
13	John P	327
14	Smiffy	69

So there you have it in all its horror. After the first event, Benny surprisingly holds the lead, while Smiffy looks stranded. But of course, with four events still left to compete in, anything could happen yet. And you know, it probably will.