Brown and out

Beckham’s Achilles tendon wasn’t the only casualty of an eventful 24 hours. In good news for Hull’s Women’s Institute and bad news for geraniums, Phil Brown was placed on gardening leave by Hull City. It’s a shame his last memorable act as Hull manager was to apologise for Jimmy Bullard and Nick Barmby having a fight, which, by the way, it is a miracle they both survived without getting seriously injured. Hull’s solariums may not be so lucky.

We’d like to think that Phil is currently strolling around the streets of Hull, ‘looking for clarity’, in the way he did when he saved a suicidal woman from topping herself on the Humber Bridge last September.

"You don't know, do you, until someone jumps, whether they were actually going to do it?" Brown said at the time. That he was pushed from the KC Stadium today means that the same question, as far as the rest of Hull’s season is concerned, won’t get an answer.