Plus: the shambles that was 1950 World Cup qualifying, and plenty more brawling teammates
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“Has any player been shown a second yellow card while being substituted for not leaving the pitch correctly?” wonders Ken Foster.
They have indeed, Ken. Let Robin Horton take you back to a bitter January in 1980, when Stoke City were the visitors to Burnley in the FA Cup third round. “Stoke’s Denis Smith, already on a yellow card, limped towards the touchline with an injured ankle, only to linger on the touchline as substitute Paul Johnson was not properly warmed up,” Robin recalls. “Referee Kevin McNally therefore sent Smith off for time-wasting. McNally was not in Stoke’s good books; Burnley won the tie via a penalty, and Stoke’s Ray Evans also got his marching orders, for what manager Alan Durban described as ‘heavy sarcasm’.” That’s as good a reason for a dismissal as we can remember.
Martin Mitchell has a more recent example. “Jermaine Johnson was playing for Sheffield Wednesday at Bramall Lane in the Steel City derby of October 2008,” recalls Martin. “He kicked a water bottle into the home support after being subbed. Johnson then went down the tunnel and had a shower. It was only after he returned that he was ‘sent off’ by the referee. He’d been booked earlier in the game for a foul and received another yellow for the water bottle incident.”
