As I write this month’s blog, it is final day between England and Spain in the Women’s Football World Cup. As the country gathers to see the Lionesses hopefully make history, it sparked a wonder of how animals often cross over into the world of sport. The most obvious sports being horse racing and dog racing. However, much more interestingly and light-hearted I thought we could look at the individual animals that have been desperate to get involved with the game, they have taken matters into their own hands (or should that be paws) by invading the pitch.
The Anfield Cat
A cat which ran on to the pitch during Liverpool’s Premier League home game against Tottenham Hotspur attracted 30,000 followers on the internet in 2012.
The grey and white tabby wandered across the turf before being scooped up by a steward.
Within minutes the cat was an internet sensation with at least three spoof Twitter accounts claiming to be the Premier League’s new star.
The cat’s owner is yet to be identified but staff at Anfield know it as Sam.
Highbury Squirrel
A few years before the Anfield Cat, came the legendary Highbury Squirrel who invaded the pitch between Arsenal’s 2006 Champions League tie against Villarreal. The only thing that prevented him from becoming a huge viral superstar in his own right was the unfortunate fact that social media didn’t really exist at the time.
Alpacas
It’s not every day that an alpaca stops play, but that’s precisely what happened during Carlton Athletic’s non-league game against Ilkley Town in 2020. The game
was halted for 15 minutes when the alpaca named Oscar escaped from a nearby farm and joined the action. Attempts were made to entice him off the pitch with food before a farmer managed to shepherd him home. Oscar’s owner told the news reporters that he “absolutely adores football”.
Dogs
There have been numerous instances of dogs invading football pitches mid game, but my personal favourite was during a friendly between Chile and Venezuela Women.
With the scores tied 0-0, the game quickly came to a halt as a black labrador burst onto the field. The young pup first ran up to a goalkeeper before playfully rolling over for scratches. It then charged over to the referee, who also treated it to some pets. The crowd cheered and whistled in excitement as the dog eventually wound its way to the sidelines. And it once again flopped over for some pets before a Chile player successfully grabbed it.
Insects
There are multiple records of insects stopping play; from swarms of bees interrupting the football home ground of Ha(stings) FC, giant locusts, a massive cloud of midges that almost scuppered England’s 2018 World Cup game against Tunisia, and even during the 2016 Euro final, from a swarm of Silvery moths invading the French stadium, a singular moth was seen breaking away from the swarm to drink the tears of Cristiano Ronaldo.
Basketball played with bats
It was with an uncanny sense of timing that a bat chose Halloween to disrupt the NBA tie between San Antonio Spurs and the Sacramento Kings. What, perhaps, the creature did not count on were the quick hands of the Spurs’ Manu Ginobili who, not content with scoring 13 points in his side’s 113-94 win, swatted it from the air as it swooped across the court.
The bat had already sent players to the sidelines twice in the first quarter. The officials stopped the game as it circled then flew across the court. First, they called for a towel to catch it, then a net. But Ginobili took matters, literally, into his own hands. When the bat returned, he picked it up from the ground before calmly carrying it off court to thunderous applause.
Parrots
As the Brazil women’s national football team limbered up a couple of years ago, their warm-up game had to be stopped when a macaw landed directly on the head of player Bruna Benites.
The blue and gold macaw was eventually coaxed from Benites’ hair and made its getaway but not before it flew the length of the pitch and perched on a goal net for a couple of minutes. Play was resumed shortly thereafter.
Kangaroos
It’s not just the football and basketball games that get interrupted by the furry locals. Dubbed as “possibly the most Australian thing to ever happen”, an amateur golfer, recently encountered a pack of kangaroos on the course!
In a bizarre turn of events, the golfer was held up when a troop of kangaroos bounded down the fairway before settling right in front of her. Rather than be perturbed by the animals resting right in the line of where she would have been planning to hit, she saw the funny side, laughing heartily as her playing partner filmed the unique moment.
As the final draws to a close, and England take a hearty defeat (and some questionable decisions from the ref but we’ll say no more on that), I think we can all agree that the Lionesses did us proud and even though there no rogue dogs, bats or Roos on the pitch, (although 25 minutes in, there was a human invasion on the pitch protesting against Putin), it was a great game. Well done England.
