Dear Noel,

I’m chairman of the club. We couldn’t get a manager this year. Eventually, a colourful local Teagasc Advisor took it.

Before last Sunday’s game, he jumped up on the table and read a passage from a Robert Service poem – that piece about “hunger not of the belly kind,/that’s banished with bacon and beans.”

The week before he got them to visualise they were Shackleton and Crean reaching their Promised Land. Our sub goalkeeper ordered a pint from Crean halfway through the exercise. He swore the television ad came into his mind.

Now the manager wants a trip to London so the lads can see Les Miserables. “It’s a story of a people coming to the light,” he says, “and that’s our motto for the year.” His motto could swallow our Lotto.

Last night our veteran wing half-back drove up onto a ditch on his way to training. He says he was ‘entering the Alpha level’ with breathing exercises, as instructed by the manager, when he dozed off. Now he wants the club to pay for the damage done to his front grill.

This manager could ruin the club. What should I do? We’ve won the first seven games of the season, and top of the all-county league table for the first time in years. There are over 30 lads at training every night. Should I let him go? Maybe my view of the world is too linear – I’m a primary school Principal.

- Louis (name and address with editor.)

 Noel replies – Book the flights and the hotel now, Louis. That trip to the West End is pure genius. You’ve stumbled on a right gem there. He could pull off the three-in-a-row, and you’ll be speaking off the back of more curtain-side trailers than a Fianna Fail candidate in a Mayo bye-election.

Send the wing-back to the best panel-beater in the parish, and, then, stand well back out of the way and let the Ag. Advisor at it for the year.

Keep the high balls low with Noel on This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it e; www.knowledgeablenoel.com; Skype (knowledgeable.noel); and Facebook (Knowledgeable Noel.) Noel plays the team game every time.

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