Sport

Dodgy Tackle: Mobility scooter might be needed at Elland Road

Leeds United manager Steve Evans has reportedly had issues finding training gear that fits him  
Leeds United manager Steve Evans has reportedly had issues finding training gear that fits him   Leeds United manager Steve Evans has reportedly had issues finding training gear that fits him  

MORBID obesity is not something to be scoffed at. Unless you’re morbidly obese - in which case you’ll scoff most things if the tasty opportunity presents itself en route to the inevitable early lunch date with the Big Man at the big pork pie shop in the sky.

With due respect to obesity, it’s fair to say Dodgy might know a thing (or two please) himself about the trials of being a kilogrammatically-challenged gent, both spawned and delivered via forceps/emergency C-section out of wedlock.

At least that’s how a polite Jacamo retail assistant might or might not term it before taking your dough (yum, pizza) for some outsized designer clothes that have probably decimated both the cotton industry and the three-man tent sector somewhere far away from your sorrily depleted fridge.

On the flip side of that very same pancake with Nutella, being cruelly labelled ‘a Jacamo victim’ or more concisely ‘a bat fastard’ by less euphemistic elements of society (family and friends) is something that really needs looked at very soon by the, er, devolved government or something.

Just because the type of socks and whips you were wearing the previous day can be ascertained by the deep vein thrombotic imprints on your shins and waistline doesn’t make you a bad person, ye know?

Anyway, with that tirade (misu) well and truly off my cleavage, it was hard not to spare a thought this week for Leeds United’s spectacularly rotund boss Steve Evans. Dealing with the whims and quirks of the Championship club’s Italian owner Massimo Cellino since being installed in the Elland Road hotseat in October would be enough to send any man spiralling headlong into comfort-eating heaven.

But it has now been revealed that Evans had to sew club badges over the badges on his old Rotherham United training kit - all because the biggest tracksuit Leeds could offer him would have needed two surgeons, a fire brigade, a flask of WD40, a gulch of Vaseline and David Blain to extricate him from it at bedtime. After the toast.

A source told a glut of English newspapers: “The manager can’t seem to fit into the official Leeds training gear.

“So he’s using his old stuff and has gone and got someone to attach Leeds badges to it so it looks like the original stuff all the rest of the coaching staff wear.”

Cellino, to his huge credit, is reported to have contacted Kappa, the club’s Italian kit suppliers, to order some ridiculously sized training outfits for his latest puppet. However, none were apparently forthcoming.

It can only be assumed Kappa’s capo di tutti kappa thought it was a spam (yum) email due to the loch of Xs in the subject line, leaving the roly-poly head coach to reach out for the sewing kit - which was presumably on the table next to a lonely-looking platter of roast beef, Yorkshire pud, curd tart, Parkin cakes, Pomfret buns, Wensleydale cheeses and a few of Steve’s old contract irregularities.

‘Mobility scootering on together....’ as the anthem now goes from the Revie Stand.