When a player comes over to the fans, takes off his shirt, and hands it to a child, he is doing it because he wants to give that kid a moment he will never forget, a memento that he will cherish for the rest of his life, something to tell everyone about in school and make him the coolest kid on the playground.
If you are a grown up and you then steal this gift, be it a shirt or a ball or boots or whatever, then you are absolutely pathetic and completely despicable.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened after Bournemouth lost away to Southampton at the weekend. Cherries defender Adam Smith picked out a 12 year old boy in the crowd and gave him his shift after the defeat, only for some absolute dickhead to snatch it away from him. His mother took to Facebook to express her dismay:
Word quickly spread, as people are more than fed up of seeing this abhorrent behaviour, and soon the player himself tweeted that he was hoping to get in touch with the mother and sort this situation out.
Fair play to him. First of all for gifting his shirt to a kid, that's something that everyone loves to see, but secondly for following up and ensuring that this young lad was looked after.
In the end, the young fan will be getting a shirt and much more:
Good to see a happy ending.
We saw public outrage earlier this year after a woman was seen pulling Jermaine Beckford's jersey out of the hands of a kid at Wembley, and it seems to happen at every other baseball game in the US, but what possesses an adult to do this?
What do you have to gain?
Check this out, got Adam Smith's shirt from the Southampton game.
-Wow, that's cool, did he just throw it to you?
Nah mate, had to steal it off some little lad, gonna put it up on eBay.
-....
You're the worst type of person. It's like the old cliché of taking candy from a baby, but worse.
Thankfully instances like this often end up with the kid getting something extra special, but it really, really pisses us off to see pathetic adults do this sort of thing with worrying regularity.
via BBC Sport.
