Where Are They Now?

Phil Brown’s teamtalk on the Eastlands pitch

Phil Brown half time teamtalkWith his woeful Hull City side trailing 4-0 at half time to Manchester City in December 2008 manager Phil Brown took decisive action and delivered a furious half time teamtalk on the pitch in front of Hull’s travelling support. In fact, Brown had planned to give his al fresco speech regardless of the score in an attempt to raise his media profile and highlight the shoddy state of changing rooms up and down the country. What became of the key players on that fateful afternoon?

1.Brian Horton
Phil Brown’s assistant manager was not in on the plan, so when Brown refused to let his players down the tunnel and launched into an impassioned pointy-fingered diatribe Horton thought he had lost his marbles. “I thought he’d lost his marbles,” said Horton years later. “It really looked for all the world as if he had completely lost his marbles,” he continued. “In the end, it’s fair to say that many others definitely also thought that Phil had utterly lost his marbles that day. And I’m not surprised by that. Not at all.”

2. Hull Player #1
Knowing in advance that he was to stage a live half-time performance art piece, Phil Brown enlisted the help of a number of extras to make the disconsolate circle around him wider and more impressive. This actor was hired on the strength of his performances in The Bill and Lovejoy as fare evader 3 and Tinker’s dentist respectively, and described working with Brown as “instructive”.

3. Dean Marney
As a senior member of the Tigers squad, Marney was singled out by Brown as the recipient for an especially vigorous finger shaking. Brown assumed Marney could cope with the public dressing down but the defender’s confidence was shaken and his career never really recovered. After a fruitless spell at Burnley, Marney fell down the leagues and will be humanely destroyed in early 2011.

4. Phil Brown
Cashing in on the notoriety he obtained in the wake of his dramatic on-pitch implosion, Brown abandoned football and is now a successful after-breakfast motivational speaker. His inspirational tales of talking down suicidal women from bridges and getting the best out of Geovanni means he is heavily in demand on the brunch buffet circuit, and widely considered to be a National Treasure.

5. Nathan Doyle
Although he appeared outwardly passive during Brown’s angry rollicking, Doyle was frantically memorising Brown’s exact location, mannerisms and facial expressions thinking “if we sign Jimmy Bullard one day this will make a fantastic ironic goal celebration”.

6. Hull Player #2
After finishing his allotted job of looking sheepish as a ringer for a Hull player this extra loitered at Eastlands to watch the second half of the game. He was mistaken by City’s Garry Cook as a member of staff and has since been working as the club’s junior assistant consultant of social media branding strategy on an annual salary of £80,000.

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