Nathalie, as I have said before, has failed me as a daughter.
Knowing full well, Fulwell even, how important Sunderland are in my life, she only went and chose to support Liverpool. Something to do with fancying John Barnes, I always reckoned.
But she has tried to make up for this disloyalty in different ways: having Sunderland as a second team (sort of, but then I don’t really approve of second teams) and scoring on her own full football debut in red and white stripes, albeit for Brentford.
And she has just made her dad especially proud by scoring again – and winning player of the match awards – as her present team, Old Actonian Ladies, successfully went for promotion from the London & South East Regional League Premier Division.
Bravo, Nat, who is actually, in her father’s entirely impartial view, a bloody good player (played for QPR Ladies, had trials, and one brief appearance as a sub, for Arsenal and once even inspired talk of a Bend It Like Beckham-style sawker scholarship in the USA).
And it’s not yet too late to abandon gloryseeking support of the whingeing, underachieving Reds and embrace the proper club/proper fan values of the Red and Whites. Might even restore the pocket money …
Sorry — I meant, of course, Nathalie!
Well done, Natalie! What with your footballing skills and your dad being the badminton scourge of Le Lav, there are the beginnings of a Randall sporting dynasty here.