A 20-Year Manhunt

Yours Truly is a stubborn person. Once he's run into some sort of mystery sports-wise, he would do his utmost to resolve it.

And recently, he's finally solved a puzzle that's been plaguing him for over 20 years.

When Yours Truly was still green and naïve, he would stick to the TV and catch the Trans World Sport show, a fast-paced sports highlight programme with excellent and to-the-point commentary. Its weekly features cover anything sports-related, from strong men competition in Bhutan to dod-sledging in Alaska, which were so fascinating that it captured Yours Truly's attention.

One day, Yours Truly watched the highlight of a game between two French Ligue 1 teams. For some reason, that game simply stuck in his mind. Unfortunately, his memory of the match was rather sketchy. He only remembered that the away team is one of the big-name teams which, on this occasion, was beaten by the home team by a score of either 3-0 or 4-0.

And there were two more clues to the puzzle:

Clue No. 1: Yours Truly remembered how the final goal was scored. It was from a penalty resulting from a blunder by the away team's goalkeeper, who was "making his debut", according to the commentator. He was diving to the side of the penalty area to collect a pass, but had to let go of the ball when he realised that his momentum was carrying him and the ball out of the area. Panicked, he decided to grab the foot of an on-rushing attacker to prevent him from shooting at an open goal, and thus conceded the penalty.

Clue No. 2: Yours Truly somehow remembered the name of the goalkeeper, which sounded something like "to-MA COK-kini" or "to-MA TOK-kini".

For years, Yours Truly has been desperately trying to find out the game in question and, in particular, the identity of this mysterious goalkeeper, but to no avail.

But then, Yours Truly consulted his old friend, the RSSSF Archive, and from there he found a link showing the results of all Ligue 1 matches.

Yet that was still not enough. Yours Truly had to figure out the season and teams involved. So the first step was to narrow down the possible seasons, which should be somewhere around the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Secondly, he had to rely on his faint memory to focus on several teams in order to shortlist the matches that ended in a 3-0 or 4-0 score.

One of the first teams Yours Truly focused on was Paris St. Germain, one of the so-called big-names, and sure enough, the score of its game at Montpellier in the 1990-91 season was 4-0. So Yours Truly simply entered the keywords "Montpeller PSG 1990-91 4-0" in Google and, voila, the first result was this.

Somewhere in the middle of the page, it reads (in French):

"73': Ferhaoui, à la lutte avec Reynaud, est déséquilibré à l'entrée de la surface par Kokkinis. Le penalty est transformé par Blanc (4-0)."

(From Google Translate service: "73': Ferhaoui, the fight with Reynaud, is unbalanced to the edge of the area by Kokkinis. The penalty is converted by White (sic) (4-0).)"

At that very moment, Yours Truly knew that he had accomplished one of the biggest missions in his life. He has finally found his man.

Thomas Kokkinis.

Thank you, RSSSF Archive!

RIP, Mr Lawrence

Way back in the innocent ages of 1995, when the local TV station began to cover the NFL Draft, Yours Truly literally blurted out at the TV, "Don't draft him. He's gonna be a bust!" when the St. Louis Rams made the ill-advised decision to draft running back Lawrence Phillips with the sixth pick overall.

In Tom Osborne's famed wishbone offense in the University of Nebraska, Phillips and quarterback Tommie Frazier were the biggest college football stars in the early- to mid-1990s. Thanks to their huge runs after huge runs, Nebraska won two National Championships in 1994 and 1995.

Not surprisingly, the Rams were very high on Phillips, so much so that they decided to ride him into the ground and trade away the incumbent Jerome Bettis to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

While Bettis' career flourished under Bill Cowher with the Steelers and eventually became "The Bus" and voted into the Hall of Fame, Phillips' off-field issues had caught up with him. After that ill-fated trade in 1996, Bettis played for 10 more seasons and had 6 1,000-yard seasons for the Steelers. As for Phillips, the Rams soon gave up on him and released him mid-way through the 1997 season, and he only played a dozen more games afterwards.

With the football career over, Phillips had run into more legal problems, ranging from domestic abuse and assault. While serving time for assault on his former girlfriend early last year, he became the prime suspect of the murder of his cellmate and was subsequently charged with first-degree murder. Sadly, while awaiting trial in prison, he was found by the prison guards dead in what is suspected as a suicide, at the age of 40.

Yours Truly has never been good at forecast, not to say making bold statements. But that day that turned out to be the peak of Yours Truly's career as a prognosticator.

For years, Yours Truly is rather proud of the draft-bust prediction on Phillips. However, his early death has cast a shadow on this once-proud moment.