Shake his hand, smile and hope he fucks off
MAIDSTONE UNITED 1 BRAINTREE 0
MATCH REPORT BY “COULDN’T ORGANISE A PISS-UP IN AN EILEEN DREWERY”
“All I said was ‘they sound like Hitler’ because they want me dead. I just lost it. No one has every chanted at me like that. I am apologising because I shouldn’t have mentioned Hitler. I’ve been in football 30 years and not once have I ever made a racist comment or had a problem with someone’s religion or race. I’m nowhere near being racist.”
Midway through the second half, the centime dropped. On the other side of the pitch, a grey-haired man burst from the opposition bench and went the full Steve King, squealing that Saidou Khan should be sent off.
“Who is that cunt?” came the question from someone on the Main Stand side of the ground. “George Borg,” came the reply. And suddenly it all made sense. Because Borg makes King look like the Dalai Lama. The quote above was his defence when he was banned from football after saying “don’t worry, Hitler will get you,” to a Wingate & Finchley fan, while he was Enfield manager. He initially denied it, then claimed it was “a joke” and you can google the full judgement 19-page judgement if you really feel like it.
Not having been there it’s impossible to be 100 percent sure who said what, or whether there was provocation. He has subsequently managed and worked with multiple players from minorities. What I can say with 100 percent certainty is the claim he’s never made a racist remark is bullshit. Back in the 80s Borg had a brief and unsuccessful spell with us as a defender and during a game at the Athletic Ground he audibly called a black opposition player something that shattered any illusions I ever had that we didn’t do that kind of thing at our club. This memory would periodically resurface, as tales of Borg’s shitgibbonry came out over the next four decades. This is just one of them, dating back to his previous spell at Braintree. There are others, allegations of spitting, abuse, screaming at his players to break their opponents’ legs, more abuse, multiple charges and multiple suspensions. He’s been described as the non-league Neil Warnock, which, incredibly, is harsh on Warnock and has been likened to Steve Evans, which, incredibly, is harsh on Evans. And somehow, someone, somewhere was always willing to give him a job.
Now it’s Braintree and on the evidence of this it’s clearly a pact of mutually assured desperation. The club seems to exist in a state of Maoist chaos and the mystery is how we didn’t win this by at least three goals. They sat deep, repeatedly gave the ball away on the edge of their box, seldom got out of their own half and relied on their keeeeepaaaaaahhhh to keep it respectable, even if his fondness for fisting repeatedly left their backline as exposed as that of an Essex-residing entertainer who almost certainly (CENSORED).
The only goal came in the 16th-minute. Khan and Zihni set up Amo, who hit a shot across goal with the same level of lethal force used by the party-goers at (CENSORED)’s mansion when they (CENSORED).
Akka would have made it 2–0, but having mugged the keeeepaaaah he was thwarted when the ref blew for a foul that was a bit like Iain Duncan Smith’s charisma: less than obvious at first glance. Khan headed over, Akka hit the post and then Noah went off and everything looked slightly less certain. We were still on top, but not quite as dominant.
The second half was similar. Braintree repeatedly Prince Andrewed around with the ball on the edge of the box and we repeatedly mugged them, only to show the touch of an Essex-based light entertainer in the penalty area. The nadir came when Allen attempted to Mancini the ball into an empty net instead of just rolling it in. For this he was given a special on-field bollocking by Elokobi, whose work in the bollocking department in fixtures against Braintree this season has already been outstanding.
Marshall had a header tipped over the bar. Allen was wiped out in the area in what looked like an absolute Peter Tatchell, only for the referee to award a throw-in. Saidou went for a 50–50 ball and Borg did his outraged act. This ended with him hugging someone by the dug out. Perhaps the sunlit uplands have mellowed him.
Lewington made a solitary save. Amo continued to roast them, but we continued to Mark Francois the final ball. Four minutes of added time saw Wishart and Elokobi repeatedly win every header and finally, with the temperature plunging ahead of the imminent arrival of Hurricane Barrymore, the whistle blew.
Still is rumoured to have once had Borg by the throat during a game at Chelmsford. After the match Borg interrupted his TV interview, kissed him on the cheek thanked him for everything he’d done for him as a player and called him a legend. Still smiled like you do at wedding when you’ve been accosted by a relative you were secretly hoping had died and magnanimously invited him back to his office for a beer. Maybe time has healed. Perhaps they’re “too old for this shit.” But let’s hope he slyly shoved the bottle up his arse before handing it to him.
UPDATE: Thanks to two readers and forum users who were watching on the far side, we can also report that Borg “lost it” after being called a “Fat Phillip Schofield” to which he responded by saying: “you can’t say much, you’re from Kent.” Just in case anyone has missed the subtext of this white hot #bantz, plucked directly from 1985, it’s that George Borg thinks you are homosexual.
It’s also alleged that he at one point “borrowed” a young supporter’s hat, before doing a routine our mole described as “like a CBeebies presenter on drugs.”
Are there any that aren’t?
