23. DOG ENDS

Suspicions Hunters Fix Draw

Concerns are being expressed that the weekly national draw to select victims to be hunted could be influenced by the hunters themselves.

It has long been suspected that the elite could be using the cover of manhunts as vendettas against those who cross them and don’t know their place. Previously, this has been confined to anecdotal evidence of massive coincidences regarding how an unassuming member of the public has irritated a hunter on Civvy Street only to find themselves selected the following Saturday night to be chased to the death by that same hunter’s hounds. But now the author Clement Hope has correlated several occurrences of this dubious ploy in practice, providing chapter and verse which leaves little doubt that something corrupt is afoot.

‘My suspicions were aroused when the manager of Lincoln City, Tommy Yakub, was selected to be hunted,’ Hope explained. ‘The club Chairman, Peter Grenadine, is also the Master of the Lincoln and Canwick Hunt. After Lincoln City had endured a sequence of nine losing matches, the Chairman was heard to mutter that he couldn’t sack Yakub as it would mean paying off the remaining two years of his contract, but he would let him experience his very own losing run. Then, sure enough, Yakub’s name was selected, that very Saturday night, to be the prey of the Lincoln and Canwick Hunt.’

Before Yakub met his grisly end, Peter Grenadine callously dismissed him for dereliction of duty, which meant no compensation was due, because Yakub refused to attend a press conference after the 4-1 defeat at home to Peterborough because the first four rows of seats were taken up by hounds from the Lincoln and Canwick Hunt.

‘When I delved deeper into this coincidence by exercising my right to be supplied with data from hunts around the country,’ Hope continued, I discovered that of the seventeen men killed by The Lincoln and Canwick Hunt fourteen of them were either employees of Lincoln City FC or had associations with them. Luther Perkins was targeted, it seems, for missing a sitter in the narrow defeat against Accrington Stanley, while Gareth Finley, the referee of the match against Notts County, had his final whistle blown, effectively, for failing to give Lincoln a stonewall penalty.’

The most unedifying spectacle, it seems, was reserved for club captain Ryan Leprosser.

‘The Chairman, along with some fans, questioned the manager’s choice of him as captain,’ Clement Hope further explained. ‘They wondered if he showed enough guts for the role. Well, he certainly displayed an abundance of guts at home to Derby County, aided by the hounds of the Lincoln and Canwick Hunt who pounced upon him as he waited to take a corner.’

‘Leprosser’s agent should’ve advised him not to turn up for the Derby match once he had been chosen to be hunted,’ Hope continued. ‘But, I suppose it didn’t help that his agent was cowering inside a four foot thick steel capsule which severely negated his ability to be heard having taken this precautionary action after peeing Peter Grenadine off by persuading another of his clients, the Lincoln City star striker Miles Vale, to put in a transfer request.’

Clement Hope believes that the chances of these employees and associates of Lincoln City FC who pissed off the chairman being randomly selected to be hunted by the very same hunt of which he is the Master are inestimable.

‘The odds on that happening are mega, mega, huge,’ he said.

Meanwhile a Government spokesperson when questioned about Clement Hope’s accusations said that they’d get back to him with an answer in due course just as soon as they could locate him. Something that has now been made all the more difficult since his selection to be hunted by The Lincoln and Canwick Hunt.