Mr. Wilson Hall of Fame Entrant Number Two

Last time round we found our first member of, begingered gremlin Mr. Wilson's, Hall of Fame. Big ol' hunk of burning journeyman Trevor Benjamin trundled out and presented his literally mental footballing quest. It was like something Tolkien thought of writing but ended up as a screwed up ball of paper in the bin because it was too bloody long and LITERALLY MENTAL.Well, we left it a couple of weeks, to let the dust settle again before we ventured back up and Lil' Wilson's head popped up out of a Match annual from 1994, his eyes gleaming with joy. It seems Mr. Wilson has already picked our next inductee into the Hall of Fame. He didn't need to say a word, his face was a picture as he showed us a picture of:

None other than Phillip Andrew Babb. Have a seat and we'll tell you a little story about why Mr. Wilson and ourselves couldn't wipe the grins from our little faces.

He's a Londaaanaaa

Born in Laaaaaaambefffff in 1970, by 1988 he had been snapped up by footballing giants Millwall. Obviously not seeing Phil's potential as a future Spice Boy and scoring mental own goals they let him move to Bradford where he made 80 appearances. Millwall may have been left rueing their decision of never giving Babb his debut for the club because he scored on his debut for The Bantams and went on to score 10 goals for them in his first season. After a successful second season whewre Phil almost managed to drag Bradford kicking and screaming to promotion, Coventry launched an audacious £500,000 bid which took him to Highfield Road in 1992, an event that easily overshadowed Boris Yeltsin's announcement that Russia would no longer target missiles at the US.

World Cup '94 and solid performances all round

Phil Babb's performances in the Premier League's first season for a founding club challenging the top 5 were nothing short of spectacularly solid. He also played in the World Cup of 1994 and won much praise, especially with a quality performance against Italy and the viv and vim of legendary Roberto Baggio. These spectacularly solid 77 appearances and thoroughly decent World Cup piqued the attention of Graeme Souness who paid £3.6 million for Phil, making him the most expensive English defender of all time, at that moment in time. He joined fellow defensive legends, new signing, Stig Inge Bjornebeye, Steve Harkness and Rob Jones. He swiped a League Cup winners medal and played with the infamous 'Spice Boys', a title referring to his awesome singing voice. He was most comparable to Sporty Spice, obviously. Anyway, back to the football, the past time Phil was really good at...

Lé Francais Owl, El Portuguese rise, The Wae'ay decline + Starsky and Hutch

Gerard Houllier, the French owl-man took over from departing Roy Evans and being a bird of prey he struck hard and fast and removed Babb from the first team and the reserves. Phil was loaned out to Tranmere, probably the greatest player they've ever had play for them. This fact was proved true when Portuguese giants Sporting Lisbon decided to take him to Estadio Jose Alvlade where after an initial settling in period he hit his stride and as Sporting Clube De Portugal took the league title and won the domestic cup our Phil was voted player of the season. It wasn't long before the Premier League came calling for one of the league's greatest defender's of all time. He played 48 games for Sunderland, but not even the mighty Babb-effect could prevent their slide to relegation. And so ended a career spanning two of the world's greatest clubs, 35 international appearances and numerous scenes of drunk and disorderly behaviour (he re-enacted scenes from Starsky and Hutch with his crime-fighting/footballing partner Mark Kennedy by sliding across a stranger's car after a few too many Babycham's... Genius).

And of course he destroyed his ball bag and pelvis by hurtling into a goalpost at 40 miles per hour.

Have a link or two to the face area!

Scrotum death (Aptly it's got the world's biggest scrotum Rory McGrath introducing it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dONtFBuCztM

A rather more accurate blog from a rather more reliable source:

http://www.liverpoolway.co.uk/blog/?p=103

I'm off to sing the Phil Babb lament, JR.