Last on MOTD: Don’t forget your poppy, Ryan

IS it poppy power or poppy fascism? Depends whether you read the Daily Mail or the Guardian, I guess. No one ever got this worked up over Comic Relief’s red noses, though.

Last on MOTD: Well bugger me, it’s Hallowe’en

AT the Championship match I was covering for a newspaper yesterday afternoon, I was in a dilemma. (Ah yes, good cars those dilemmas, as Ted Chippington used to say – and indeed still does.) Should I try to crowbar in a Hallowe’en reference or not?

Last on MOTD: Who’s the Twit?

BEFORE this weekend, the most contentious post on Hull City striker Jozy Altidore’s Twitter feed was his claim that Olly Murs would win X Factor. (I mean, come on Jozy, surely Stacey’s going to win.)

Last on MOTD: Sylvester Stallone v Robert Plant

IS Sylvester Stallone really an Everton fan? And if so, does this mean that Rocky Balboa’s repeated attempts to recapture former glories can serve as a metaphor for Howard Kendall’s numerous stints at Goodison Park?

Last on MOTD: One week in the crazy life of Phil Brown

IT’S hard not to have a sneaking admiration for Phil Brown’s dark sense of humour, following the incident on Wednesday in which the Hull manager talked a woman out of jumping off the Humber Bridge while taking his team for a walk.

Last on MOTD: Ring my bell

JUST about everyone in Portsmouth knows who John Westwood is. He’s the man who loves Pompey so much that he changed his name by deed poll to John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood.

He’s also the chap who rings a bell at Portsmouth’s home games. Or at least, he does when he isn’t getting into arguments with the club over health and safety regulations.

Last on MOTD: Home discomfort in Bolton

I’VE never quite viewed football punditry in the same light since the episode of Fantasy Football in which Frank Skinner bet Alan Hansen £50 that he couldn’t crowbar the word ‘rounding’ into his Match of the Day analysis.

Last on MOTD: An Alanis Morissette moment

PEOPLE go on and on about that Carlos Alberto goal in the 1970 World Cup final as if it were the greatest football moment ever. Come on, it’s not even Brazil’s most memorable World Cup moment. That one came courtesy of Clive Thomas in 1978.

Last on MOTD: From Harry Redknapp to Coleen Nolan

WEST Ham’s last two matches could hardly have contrasted more. One featured levels of violence so frightening that everyone from Harry Redknapp to Coleen Nolan expressed justified condemnation. The other was so boring that it sent a baby to sleep.

Last on MOTD: Back to Birmingham, Jonathan

I’VE got a load of old football programmes at home that I’m thinking of chucking out. I never read them, and they take up too much space in the back room. Yet when I mentioned this to a couple of work colleagues the other day, they looked at me as if I was mad.