He comes from a contention where preparation is infrequently seen as a pointer of weakness, nonetheless Clarke Carlisle has done history.
In a gorgeous 45-minute performance, the Burnley defender became the initial Premier League footballer to crop up on and win an piece of Countdown. I cant contend the improved than winning a big football diversion but the up there, he pronounced afterwards.
Playing for a bar that has won usually one of the last fifteen joining games, the criticism obviously came from the heart. It was additionally the achievement of a lifetimes ambition. Im usually gay to be here, he said, one of a fibre of admissions that competence once have been seen as intensely deleterious for a veteran footballer.
The former England defender Graeme Le Saux claims that he endured a decade of abuse on comment of his university preparation and his acknowledgment that he review The Guardian. Carlisle, however, has not nonetheless suffered taste since of his capability to form seven-letter words. Taunting inside of the Burnley patrol has assumingly been singular to associate players singing the Countdown chime in training. Carlisle, 30, has publicly concurred his love of vocabulary, his obsession to Scrabble and his prolonged indebtedness of Countdown.
Between 2001 and 2002, whilst out of movement with a cruciate vinculum injury, he unsuccessful an try-out for the show, though he did crop up on the ITV show Britains Brainiest Footballer, that he won.
Eight years on, Carlisle felt ready to plunge in to Countdown again. He emerged on the show similar to a non-league group on a crater run, receiving on the reigning hold up Adam Guest.
He appeared shaken at first, revelation to the host, Jeff Stelling, who reasonably sufficient is additionally a football pundit for Sky Sports, that he hoped his team-mates werent watching.
He was a point down at the finish of the initial duration (it is a diversion of 3 halves), but he appears to have since himself a unrelenting talking-to in the break, since he proceeded to frisk in to the lead, picking out smaller, dossier and revels, from the variety of letters and personification them similar to shining crossfield passes. By the last jingle, he had won 89-55. Your team-mates cant take the mickey out of you as well majority now, pronounced Stelling.
Victory equates to he will live to quarrel an additional show, up to a limit of eight episodes, though as nonetheless there is no choice to fool around in Europe.
The usually alternative footballer to have won Countdown was the Notts County midfield player Neil MacKenzie, who is right away with non-league Tamworth. He won five games in 2008 prior to a quarter-final defeat.
I am gay and so relieved, pronounced Carlisle, left, He is right away behind in Burnley prior to a critical diversion opposite Portsmouth in their relegation battle.
On the head: five alternative brainy players
Frank Lampard
The England midfielder reportedly scored 150 in a new Mensa exam conducted by Brian English, the Chelsea bar doctor, as piece of investigate in to how head injuries can affect footballers" neurological development. "Lampard scored one of the top set of outlines ever available by the association you do the tests, and higher than me," Dr English said.
Arjen de Zeeuw
The likeable former Wigan Athletic defender deferred a healing scholarship grade in his local Netherlands to aspire to a career in football, prior to returning to preparation on his early retirement from the sport. He hopes to request his believe of forensics in a new pursuit as an inquisitive military detective.
Craig Johnston
After a festive career with Liverpool in the Eighties, the Australian indulged his passion for pattern by building the antecedent of the Adidas Predator football boot. He after total a successful diversion show called The Main Event and invented a device that monitors the essence of road house minibars. He is right away a veteran photographer.
Ossie Ardiles
The former Argentina midfielder total football with his studies as a university law tyro prior to he won the World Cup in 1978, earning him a shock send to Tottenham Hotspur. He brought his books with him to London but in the future gave up on his second career. Currently seeking for a coaching job, he spends piece of his free time personification chess and has a "rating" of some-more than 2,000, that roughly creates him a master of the sport.
Pat Nevin
The hilt of an humanities grade from Glasgow Caledonian University and right away a journal columnist and broadcaster, the former Scotland and Chelsea winger stood out for his comprehension and independent low-pitched tastes during the 1980s and 1990s. He eschewed the cliched format of majority football biographies - and as if distanced himself from the Stamford Bridge hardcore - by co-writing his with a clergyman as a discourse exploring his innermost fears.
