Previously it was a line of questioning that may have provoked the volcanic temper of Richard Cockerill, but now Leicester Tigers director of rugby is dancing to a different tune.
The egg-chasers used to run the East Midlands town but now, like the Tattaglia crime family in The Godfather, they find themselves outmanoeuvred by an unassuming Italian.
Before Leicester City started to run away with the Premier League, a European Cup quarter-final at Welford Road would dominate the local sporting agenda
Now Cockerill, the boss of English rugby’s most dominant club, has to field questions about Claudio Ranieri’s footballers. Not only does he answer them but he answers them enthusiastically, declaring his hope that Leicester – previously on the map for being the home of fictional teenage loser Adrian Mole – can become the capital of English sport.
There was a time Cockerill could just talk about the visit of Stade Francais and the Tigers’ biggest game of the season.
That was before City could go on a run of four straight 1-0 victories to stretch their lead at the top of the table to seven points with six games remaining and before Ranieri was collecting his second manager of the month award in a single season.
It was also before I had to start catching myself referring to a football team based over 500 kilometres from where I grew up as “we”.
I always hated those people, the ones who said “us” when talking about Manchester United or Liverpool. I now realise it is a nearly unavoidable consequence of spending too much time talking about the football team you support.
Who wouldn’t want to be associated with Leicester City this season? They are the feelgood story of the season, the plucky little underdogs taking advantage of the indifferent form of the Premier League’s big hitters to plot one of the least likely sporting stories ever told.
Who can resist hitching their wagon to that runaway train?
Certainly not Dr Mark Bonar anyway. The Dublin-born medic exposed in last weekend’s Sunday Times as an alleged supplier of performance enhancing drugs to over 150 athletes jumped on the bandwagon, with an unnamed Leicester City player among the Premier League stars alleged to have availed of his services.
Ranieri was asked about the report by reporters after the 1-0 win over Southampton on Sunday afternoon but the press officer intervened. The club had given their response earlier in the day.
“Leicester City Football Club is extremely disappointed that The Sunday Times has published unsubstantiated allegations referring to players from clubs including Leicester City when, on its own admission, it has insufficient evidence to support the claims.”
Fair enough, by their own admission the Sunday Times accept they did not have the corroborating evidence to name the players (others from Chelsea, Arsenal and Birmingham City were also mentioned by Bonar), but since then the topic has dropped off a cliff.
COMMENT: The problem with doping in football is that nobody wants to listen | @dionfanning on sport's latest scandal https://t.co/mg0hkKRuhN
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 4, 2016
The majority of follow-up stories were strong rejections of the Sunday Times story by football journalists, pointing out that Bonar was an unreliable source and stating that the FA carried out over 2,000 tests last season (not that many when you consider there are well over 2,000 professional footballers in England).
Leicester’s title surge is a fairytale. That doesn’t mean it is all built on lies, but it also doesn’t mean anything that challenges the lovely narrative should be ignored.
Desperate as I am to see Leicester win the league, I’d like to know they won it fair and square. However the very people who were sniggering about Leicester players’ remarkable powers of recovery earlier in the year have stopped, now that a serious (and unfounded) accusation has been made.
Funny that.
Leicester are on course to become the first club since Alex Ferguson’s 2002-03 Manchester United to win the league with 20 or fewer starters. So far Ranieri has named only 18 different players in his starting line-ups, but the first-choice XI are well known at this stage.
Schmeichel-Simpson-Morgan-Huth-Fuchs-Mahrez-Kante-Drinkwater-Albrighton-Okazaki-Vardy now rattles off the tongue like the Wexford 1996 All-Ireland winners from ‘Dancing at the Crossroads’.
When compared with the likes of United and Liverpool, Leicester have been really fortunate with injuries. That could of course be down to a great medical team, solid pre-season and a team spirit forged on trips to the pizza parlour and impromptu big boys beanos in Copenhagen.
“We” certainly hope so.
But what if it’s not? Does anyone care?
“I” do.
Almost more disconcerting than Bonar’s revelations has been the reaction of everybody else.
