Ray of hope as unfancied Potters pack a punch

I’M NOT quite sure why Stoke felt the need to wheel out a rather bemused looking Sugar Ray Leonard prior to kick-off last Saturday.

He gamely put on the shirt presented to him — Stanley Matthews’ No. 7 — and waved to the crowd, but I think the whole occasion was rather lost on him. Gawd only knows what he made of 25,000 shaven-headed northerners singing Tom Jones songs intermittently.

But let’s get to the football (that’s ‘soccer’ to you Sugar Ray). The Potters did rather well and made us work hard for our result — even without the services of the human windmill. They were also unlucky not to get a penalty; perhaps if Ricardo Fuller was wearing a red shirt, a lorry load of hair-gel and an arrogant smirk the referee would have pointed to the spot!