Czech mate
I remember speaking to Roman Bednar about 10 months ago after an Albion game.
I don't recall the match, the opponents, the result or even whether Bednar scored. But I do remember the conversation turned to the Czech national team.
Bednar's face dropped, his demeanour changed and he started using a form of English I had no idea was in his vocabulary. He threw a bit of Czech in - using a word which sounded remarkably like a Polish word I had once been told off for using by my parents. I never knew the two languages were so similar...
Anyway, to cut a long story short, it's clear he didn't get on with coach Karel Bruckner. He had played one game against Serbia, not played particularly well in a 3-1 defeat and didn't play again. He was in danger of becoming a Czech version of Michael Ricketts. Jan Koller was still playing, Milan Baros was still scoring goals. He was fading into obscurity, mainly on the Heart of Midlothian treatment table.
But his one-cap tag may be about to be shed. Coach Petr Rada is more switched-on to Bednar's ability and has handed him a recall for the World Cup qualifier against San Marino.
Bednar is more like an old-fashioned robust English centre-forward than a typical Eastern European striker.
He may not be everyone's cup of tea and whether he can take to England's top flight remains to be seen. So far he's not doing too badly in what is an under-performing Albion side. He has potential to get even better.
He's deserved his call-up.
And knowing what he's like around the dressing room, the likes of Zdenek Grygera, Tomas Ujfalusi and co had better hide the Deep Heat and keep their underwear out of sight.
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Chris Lepkowski - Mail man Chris Lepkowski’s view of what’s going on at West Bromwich Albion FC.
Don't you think that the coolest position to finish in the Premiership would be 14th?
The Alps are groovy.
Formula One is hugely over-rated.
I'm ever so good at getting on 'pole' position, Ha ha ha.
Hamsters are crepuscular. In the wild, they burrow underground in the daylight to avoid being caught by predators. Contrary to popular belief they are a nocturnal animal. Their diet contains a variety of foods, including dried food, berries, nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables. In the wild they will eat any wheat, nuts and small bits of fruit and vegetables that they might find lying around on the ground, and will occasionally eat small insects such as small crickets or mealworms. They have elongated fur-lined pouches on both sides of their heads which extend to their shoulders, which they stuff full of food to be brought back to the colony or to be eaten later.
Bye.
Whatever happened to Paddy Mulligan?
I have got a rake and a hoe in my shed.
Singapore's grand prix is contested over 61 laps and the total race distance is 309.087 km.
Lobsters live on rocky, sandy, or muddy bottoms from the shoreline to beyond the edge of the continental shelf. They generally live singly in crevices or in burrows under rocks.
We produce over 120,000 tonnes of waste in Rotherham each year, enough to fill Millmoor (Rotherham United Football Club's former home ground) twice.
Antwerp Zoo, one of the oldest zoos in the world, is one of Antwerp's most popular attractions. With an animal population of over 5,000 and more than 950 different species. It attracts about 1 million visitors each year.
Massive subsidence in Red Square is threatening the Kremlin with collapse.
Half-inch cracks which first appeared near the Russian government complex's walls in May are now two feet wide.
The subsidence is blamed on old KGB underground shelters and telephone tunnels.
A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum driven, that strikes the hours using small bellows and pipes that imitate the call of the Common Cuckoo in addition to striking a wire gong. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call was installed in almost every kind of cuckoo clock since the middle of the eighteenth century and has remained almost without variation until the present.
Alfred John William Croom
Born: 23rd May 1896, Reading West, Berkshire, England
Died: 16th August 1947, Whiteheath Gates, Oldbury, Worcestershire, England
Batting: Right-hand batsman
Bowling: Right-arm off-break
The oldest type of clock is a sundial clock, also called a sun clock. They were first used around 3,500 B.C. (about 5,500 years ago). Sundials use the sun to tell the time. The shadow of the sun points to a number on a circular disk that shows you the time. In the big picture below on the right, the shadow created by the sun points to 9, so it is nine o'clock.
The Bayeux Tapestry is not a true tapestry; it is an elaborately embroidered wall hanging originally displayed at the Bayeux Cathedral, and now housed at a special museum in Bayeux, Normandy.
Gromit remains silent, communicating only through facial expressions and body language.
Tragic about John Sergeant.
A big hello to the Birmingham Mail's F1 readership.
I guess there's little to do in the 'off-season'.
What was the Czech/Polish swear word?
'Stoke City'.....or 'Tony Pulis' maybe?
Looking forward to another hammering of the Smethwick's Harlem Globetrotters