The Mystery of David James’ Barnet Affair

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A while back I created a hypothesis about The Portsmouth and England number one David James, and today that hypothesis became a full blown theory.

The England goalkeeper earned the nickname 'Calamity James' for his high profile mistakes, for instance when playing for Liverpool in the early '90s (I believe it was against Newcastle) he let a long shot slip straight between his arms, he later blamed the fact that he had being playing a Nintendo games console the night before and that had messed up his ability to perceive depth and distance.

It was around then that I first began formulating my theory; and the other day when I watched England draw to the Czech Republic in the friendly at Wembley that theory became complete, when I saw James inexplicably run out to meet an attacker on the half way line and to somehow get away without conceding a goal.

The theory is this; when David James has a flamboyant attention-grabbing hairstyle i.e. bleached blonde hair or blonde braids or a superman style, he's more prone to the notorious football 'mare', in other words that's when he's most likely to make a calamitous error.

However when the Portsmouth shot-stopper has a 'normal' hairstyle a short back and sides, clean shaven or an afro, he has a blinder. Take today for instance away at Everton, he saved a penalty and made several incredible saves to keep Portsmouth in it; who eventually ran out 3-0 winners.

If there was a formula it would look something like this, where H = hair and F = flamboyant and M = (night)mare it is represented such;

M=HF²

I call it Roli's Barnet Theory of Culpability



So Fabio Capello take heed, in order to avoid any more embarrassing and potentially costly goalkeeping errors, if need be make sure David James has a haircut or undoes his braids and puts the peroxide bottle away before he pulls on an England shirt. Luckily for the upcoming games against Andorra and Croatia James has done the decent thing and shaved off his wiggly braids and now has a much less attention grabbing 'number one' haircut.

p.s. For all those not familiar in cockney rhyming slang Barnet Affair = Hair.