Knowing Your Onions

The media had quite a lot of fun yesterday at the expense of Darren Bent, who sliced into a tendon in his finger while cutting up an onion for a sandwich. Many of the websites and papers marvelled at the fact that Darren was making his own food at all. Lots of them were surprised that he was making a sandwich out of onions, and there were sly digs to the effect that with him only being a Charlton player, an onion sandwich might well be the limit of Darren's culinary ambitions, unlike, the implication seemed to be, the glamorous cosmopolitan young men who play at Chelsea and Arsenal, who presumably rarely move away from rocket trimmed with garlic shoots, and the obligatory warmed goats cheese (a revolting substance in my view) which, along with roasted red peppers (and I'm not over­­-keen on them, either) seems to represent the epitome of continental chic in the eyes of British-based commentators.

A person who calls himself Mediawatch, and who refers to his wife as Mrs Mediawatch, and who is to be found on a site called F365, helpfully reproduced an advertisement for an onion slicing machine, along with the tart (sorry) comment that having just signed a lucrative extension to his contract, Darren could well afford the £21.99 and get himself one.

And even dear old Frankie Valley got in on the act, with a very tongue-in-cheek piece about how the safest things to make and eat are porridge and custard, and that no man should ever contemplate cooking anything else.

But Frankie, like many another, made the mistake of assuming that if Darren was cutting an onion, then he must have been making an onion sandwich. But onion sandwiches don't exist, do they? I mean it is not a normal thing to make a sandwich out of raw onions and nothing else.

Now I don't actually have any inside information on this, but it is my belief that what Darren actually was doing was adding a bit of raw onion to, as it might be, a beef sandwich, or a salad sandwich, and as this is something I often do myself, I do not feel the inclination to sneer.

And anyway, cutting up onions is not an easy job; you need both hands; one to hold what has to be a fairly sharp knife, the other to position the onion. If, as I also found out the hard way five years ago, the onion is quite a fresh one, with a tight skin and flesh, then the moment when the knife meets the curve of the onion can result in the knife failing to cut into the onion, and instead forcing it away to one side, so that the blade then slashes down through mid air and makes contact with the other hand. I got off with a flesh wound that day.

The early media accounts reported that Darren had actually severed a finger, though this was revised to his having injured a tendon, later. But what surprised me was the view taken by the Daily Mirror among others, that Darren's injury would mean him being out for six weeks.

I found this hard to believe. Darren isn't a goalkeeper. Surely he could wrap his wounded hand in something while playing. OK, maybe a few days resting it completely first, but the Mirror etc. were off, listing all the matches Darren would not be scoring goals for us in.

Wyn Grant, however, did point out that there might be some risks in Darren's playing until he's all better; he might fall at an awkward angle when tripped by a Premiership defender (perish the thought), but all the same, six weeks seems a bit much.

And then the above picture appeared, courtesy of a selection taken by Clive Richardson at Sparrows Lane, Charlton's training ground, yesterday morning. It shows Darren (centre), hand swathed in bandages, er, training, or getting ready to. One of his team-mates, whom I cannot identify at this distance, seems to be checking his other hand, just in case.

And then it was announced that Darren, hand presumably well-strapped up, would be playing in today's friendly against Millwall.

But in the end he didn't.

I will leave you there for now, for, as the fates would have it, I am off to chop an onion as the first step in constructing a meat and potato pie for supper. I'll let you know how I get on, and I don't want any rumours going round about how JB likes nothing better on a Saturday night than an onion sandwich.

Late score: Millwall 1 Charlton XXII 4.

(Charlton put out 11 different players in each half. XI A made a 1-­1 draw in the first 45 minutes, and XI B won 3-­0 in the second period. What this proves I hesitate to say).