Sitton duck

"All I'm saying is, when it pops out, you've gotta be crafty..." - what does this mean? Is it the sage advice doled out from a master baby thief to his young apprentice? No - rather, its one of many gnomic pronouncements from Prince-lookalike ex-Leyton Orient manager John Sitton, who garnered fame for his manic half-time outburst (below) captured on film in Channel 4's 1995 documentary Orient: Club For A Fiver


It is difficult to pick a favourite moment here, with so many ludicrous examples of a man singularly failing to deal with the pressure of his job packed in to such a short space of time. There's his doomed attempt at calm, manifested in the low quaver of his opening words which resemble nothing so much as a trembling baby building up to a monster tantrum on the bus.

Then there is Sitton the philosopher: "What'd I say to you about good players? They wanna be good players all the time. Don't you know how profound that is? Have you not examined the fucking words?". By the time he's expelled this wisdom, Sitton, close to tears, has already sacked a player on the spot.

Sitton's least explicable moment surely comes when, arcing from his mouth and leaping above his extravagant sports polo-neck, the following words drop like nonsense bombs:
"You, you little cunt, when I tell you to do something and you, you fucking big cunt, when I tell you to do something, do it. Cos if you come back at me, we'll have a right sort out in here, alright? And you can pair up if you like, and you can bring someone else to help you out, and you can bring your fucking dinner. Cos by the time I'm finished with you, you'll fucking need it".

The first bit I get: it's common-or-garden football aggression. But bring your fucking dinner? John, you've lost me. With the most generous associative logic applied to an analysis of his words, one might suggest that he was trying to say something along the lines of, "You'll be eating hospital food when I'm finished with you".

But he didn't say that. He advised two men to bring their dinners to a fight, and told them that they'd need them afterwards. It's a fantastic image - two bloodied, battered footballers crawling over to a plate of steak and chips following a good kicking from Mr. Sitton - but, alas, Sitton was never around long enough to bring his vision to life.

Like a first year undergraduate essay, the last word must belong to Wikipedia:

John Sitton is a former professional footballer, manager of Leyton Orient and
black cab driver ... Alongside his career in transport, Sitton also works for the FA
Coaching Education scheme

Once you have digested the terrifying possibilities of

a) Hailing a cab and discovering that this lunatic is your driver
or
b) Enrolling in a course at the FA and discovering that this lunatic is your teacher,

you can take solace in the fact that he has given you 14 years fair warning. If you turn up without your fucking dinner, you've only got yourself to blame. AC