''HEY, Jim, yer not going to win today, are you!'' was the question, made indubitably rhetorical accompanied as it was by the steely flash of a flick knife.
The football goalkeeper, to whom the query with menaces was aimed, was afflicted with a sudden and severe case of ''dropsy'' resulting in his team losing rather heavily.
He received a good ribbing from his pals but avoided a stabbing.
That personal recollection of schoolboy sport at its most squalid was prompted by the Nancy Kerrigan and Monica Seles affairs.
All three cases were perpetrated in the name of sport by people with no active involvement in sport.
The young buck with the blade wanted his friends to win the football match, the guy who stabbed Seles was a fan of her rival Steffi Graf and it's becoming clear that Kerrigan was ''hit'' so ice foe Tonya Harding would be assured of a place at the Winter Olympics.