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Goalie Eats Pie and Loses His Job, While Bettors’ Wallets Fatten

posted onFebruary 21, 2017

Article snippet: An English soccer player who enjoyed a meat pie on the sideline during a game was forced to resign from his team on Tuesday after his meal spurred a formal investigation into gambling. The strange tale involves a Cinderella team, a bookmaker eager for publicity and, most important, a portly, middle-aged goalkeeper with a taste for meat and potatoes. When Sutton United, a small team from the fifth tier of English soccer, met mighty Arsenal in an F.A. Cup quarterfinal on Monday, there was naturally a lot of attention on the game from all over. One of the Sutton players who was singled out for pregame press was Wayne Shaw, as much for his girth as for his talent. His own team referred to him as the Roly Poly Goalie. He is 46 years old, 6-foot-2 and somewhere around 322 pounds, or 23 stone as the British papers usually put it. Mostly a coach, caretaker and community liaison for the small-time team, he was also its backup goalkeeper. As a teenager, he played for the professional club Southampton and was on the same team as the soccer legend-turned-BBC broadcaster Alan Shearer. “I actually followed my dreams to the Premier League, and he followed his to the burger van, I think,” Shearer said in the pregame BBC coverage of Monday’s match. Bookmakers rushed to provide betting opportunities on the high-profile nationally televised game. In its eagerness to stand out in the competitive industry, the lesser-known company Sun Bets offered lighthearted, but very real, odds of... Link to the full article to read more

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