World of Sport - Football ban for Pads in Chad

Chad, Africa,12 May. Irish troops serving in lawless Chad have been banned from playing football, not because they aren’t very good at it but on health and safety grounds - because the ground is too hard.

Irish Defence Minister Willie O’Dea… (real name) said the ban was brought in by the commander of the 99th Infantry, serving with a UN force in the African country, after a risk assessment of all activities including sports.

“It was the commander’s assessment that the risk of hospitalisation or permanent repatriation of personnel due to sports injuries was not acceptable to him as all personnel are required for operational deployments on immediate notice,” O’Dea said today.

He went on; ” The ground in Chad is extremely hard and when people fall, it tends to have a much greater impact on their bodies than falling in a field in Ireland, where the ground is not nearly as hard.”

The risk assessment apparently did not cover the possibility of getting shot by a drug addled teenager, which you would have thought is more of a worry in Chad than a quick game of football.

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