Hull City OCD XI

Read this and started thinking about alphabetical City Teams. Think we all have a bit of OCD, keep thinking about it, it'll get to ya. Start posting start with A obviously full team, in their positions GK RB etc

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog

I blame Mike Selvey. It must have seemed such an innocuous remark at the time, just one line among many in an idle piece about his all-time England Ashes XI. But for some reason it caught in my mind like a burr on a coat, and has been stuck fast ever since, too deeply entwined to be dislodged. “It is a game all cricket followers have played at sometime or other: pick an XI,” he wrote. “When I was a kid, it would be England to play Mars … I’ve done teams whose names begin with the same letter, or have the same number of letters, and not so long ago I compiled for a website an all-time team of those who played the game left-handed …”

By the time he got to the punchline at the end of the paragraph, (“In the responses to that I was questioned by one person as to why Sachin Tendulkar was not in “because had he been left-handed he would have been the greatest left-hander of them all”) he had lost me. My thoughts were already elsewhere. “Teams whose names begin with the same letter.” All English, and all internationals. Test players, in fact, just to make it more difficult. Amiss, Atherton. And I was under way. Abel, Afzaal. And while my eyes sped on, skimming through Selve’s words, the back of my brain was occupied elsewhere. Adams, Ali. My inner monologue has been running on ever since.

That summer was a rough one. Ames, Allen. I had too much on my mind to get to sleep at night, and so would lie awake, eyes closed, ominous thoughts bouncing around inside my head. Another Allen, Appleyard, And Agnew. Until I struck upon a solution. I decided to compile XIs for every letter of the alphabet. It was the best balm I could find for the fever, a soothing mantra, repetitive, like counting sheep, only just interesting enough to hold my attention till I fell asleep again. It kept everything else away till the break of day. Agnew? Really? Surely we can get a better fast bowler than Agnew?

Boycott, Broad. And so it went, night, after night, after night. Not Broad. Brearley. Boycott and Brearley, then Broad. And day, after day, after day. On the bus. During meetings. Watching trailers. Swimming lengths. It became an obsession and, by extension, a curse. Compiling alphabetical XIs is, you see, something of a Sisyphean task, in that by the time you’ve got to the end of ‘W’ – you can’t wring much mileage out of X, Y, and Z – you’ve entirely forgotten most of the people you picked for the A side. Butcher, Barrington, some team this. And since you’ve forgotten, you start all over again, expecting, this time round, that all the names will stick.

I say ‘you’, when of course what I really mean is ‘I’. Botham, Binks. That’s just an attempt to distance myself from the shame I feel about it all, in much the same way that I once slammed my notebook shut when a colleague at the next desk caught sight of all the names I’d scribbled on the pages and asked what I was up to. I was struggling to keep mental stock of where I was at by that point, and so had started to commit the lists to paper. Broad, Bedser. “Oh, nothing.”He shot me a sideways glance. Never mentioned it again. Barnes, and Blythe. Though I’m sure he sneaked a glance while I was at lunch.

Eventually I decided to out myself on the over-by-over, reckoning that it must be the closest thing I could find to a community who would understand my affliction, that I might find support from a few fellow sufferers. Hutton! Hobbs! Hammond! But it was a bust. I was (rightly) upbraided by one reader for leaving Bell out of the B team, but otherwise the response was decidedly underwhelming. Hardstaff Jr, Hayward. One or two people made token efforts. A few more misconstrued what I was up to and sent lists that read: Atherton, Boycott, Cowdrey, Dexter, Edrich, and so on, an error which irritated me out of all due proportion. ‘Stop getting it wrong!’ Hendren, Hegg. Hegg? H’m.

It began to dawn on me that this was a thoroughly unnatural exercise for a grown man to be indulging in, that the sheer quantities of time and energy and thought I was devoting to it all, were, in fact, really quite weird. Hirst, Harmison, Hoggard, and, and, and who? Needs a spinner. Worse still, when I got home that night my girlfriend waited for the nearest thing she could find to an appropriate moment and then asked “So, umm, your OBO today. Is that really what you are up thinking about after I’ve gone to sleep each night?” The look on her face suggested it would be best to laugh it off. Hollies! Of course. Which I did. “That? No, no, that was just a joke. You know. To fill the time between overs.”

Soon after that I decided to break the long-standing rules of the game, and started looking online for help. Not so much with the names themselves as in search of consolation that I wasn’t the only one with the condition.

I found it, eventually, in a corner of the Australian sports site The Roar, where someone named JKG was attempting a similar venture . JKG, whoever he is, was compiling all-time international XIs, rather than ones for each individual nation. And he had left out Frank Tyson from his T team. Still, I couldn’t but admire the way he had begun by breaking his teams up into separate lists of batsmen, wicketkeepers, all-rounders, and bowlers, and the swiftness with which he abandoned that plan once he realised the size of the task he had taken on. And I related, too, to the mild depression he suffered while compiling his E team , and the fact that he was so fed up at being forced to include Mark Ealham at No6 that he abandoned the project for a week in despair.

Well, a problem shared and all. After reading his lists, I found my mind, for the first time, was free. The rollcall, which had been running on loop, was over. And for many months I didn’t give it another thought. Until last week, when, up awake worrying about the book I’m working on, Harold Gimblett popped into my head, entirely uninvited, like the tic of a lip as a nerve shivers under stress. At first it seemed a sweet relief from the strain. And then I was off all over again. Consider this confession a desperate effort to find catharsis. And hope it works, since the next step will be to pick up a drill and trepan myself less I wind up alone rocking in the corner, muttering to myself “Gooch, Graveney, Gower, Greig, Gatting …”

 

what?

 

Adebola to Zayette....please fill in the gaps....you can do it

PS. We may have had an Aaardvark playing for us once...just a sub in 1905, before subs were legal, but I really can't be sure.....

 

First names first - OCD.


Adriano Basso

Alan Rogers Alton Thelwell Alex Bruce Andy Holt

Ahmed Elmo Andy Hessenthaler Adrian Caceres

Andy Saville Andy Payton Alan Warboys

 

adebola
burgess
chester
davies
evans
france
hobbs
ince
jelavic
kilbane
livermore
mcgregor
noble
okocha
proschwitz
quinn
ramirez
sagbo
turner
vine
walters
yeates
zayette

 

McGregor
Rosenior Chester Davies Figueroa
Meyler Huddlestone Bruce Brady
Hernandez Snodgrass

 

Alf Ackerman slots in there......

 

No 'h' or 'u'......?

 

oh yeh

huddlestone
geovanni
dunno cant think of a u

 

Amos

Angus Anderson Atkins

Askew Andrews Ashbee Appleby Amoo

Allsopp Alexander

 

u's are tricky - beats me too.

 

Not even a 'g'......?

 

Uddlestone, the Ull City midfielder.

 

'Uckin 'Ell - 'u're right

 

Ah...I get red-shifted travelling so close to the speed of light !

 

Ah...I get red-shifted travelling so close to the speed of light !

 

you gonna invite me to come and stay at yours? it's my dream

 

glad someone got it.

Billy Bly

Frankie Banks Neil Buckley Wayne Brown Dennis Booth

Peter Barnes Billy Bremner George Boateng Nick Barmby
Ben Burgess Linton Brown

All playing in their right positions. Now onto C.

 

Culkin

Coles Cooper Collins Clement

Caceres Cairney Curran

Chilton Cousin Carter

 

Nearly 60 players with the letter D