The Prince of Portugal and the Cuttlery King – A Parfitt & Wheels Affair

They say that Romeo & Juliette is the greatest love story ever told. The feuding Montague’s and Capulet’s. That’s what they say, and to be fair, they are probably right. Although 50 Shades must be in the running too......


This isn’t about the Montague’s or the Capulet’s though. It’s not even set in Italy. It’s the story of Wheels of the mighty Spoon Army of Sao Paolo, and Parfitt, finding his feet in Lisbon with Benfica.


The two sides came together a couple of weeks back in the most eagerly awaited Youth Cup match in T100 history. On the one side, the always eccentric, often amusing Nick Wheels, and on the other side, a man who has enjoyed 5 seasons of back to back abject failure, before somehow ending up in one of the most coveted jobs in all of the league.


This tale is not about the match however, it centres around the night two of the greatest figures in Top 100 history and a night on the Portuguese tiles with Alex McLean of Inter.


We’ve had known each other for years, we all attended the same school and had had our fair share of alcohol related misfortunes.

We went drinking in a bar/club (the kind of bar with a small dancing area) and as per usual, Wheels smuggled some homemade Brazilllian hybrid stuff in. You know, the kind that's good at degreasing engines. He's one cheap motherfucker so he doesn't pay for alcohol in bars beyond one or two beers.

Anyway, this particular night i was celebrating my first win with Benfica so i do the logical thing that every fresh-into-success manager does and i buy everybody drinks, and have a few more than usual myself. To top it off I slip into the bathroom every now and again and help myself to a solid serving of Wheels magic moonshine.

Fast forward to a few hours later and I’m pretty spannered. I'm hitting on all the cougars in the place, my speech is slurred and I feel like I'm the king of the world. This is when Alex decides I've probably had enough and it's time for us to leave. Between them they more or less drag me out of the place and I eventually submit and agree to come along. We all walk home and after about a mile or so Alex goes his own way and it's just me and Wheels.

Wheels and I live close to each other and the road home takes us past our old school. So as we walk past the school grounds, I come up with the genius idea of jumping the fence, breaking in, and taking a dump in the staff room room. Wheels is pretty hammered himself, so he doesn't see a problem with this plan.

Getting in is easy, the front fence is pretty low and there's another fence behind it, but that one has a hole in it. We get into the courtyard only to realize that there are two guards, Beddows and Frank, patrolling it. We both panic and decide to bail on the whole plan. While any sober human with even a limited capacity to reason would've just gone out the way we came in, we decided that that is no longer an option and we went for the back exit that leads to a different street. 5 minutes of sneaking around through the shadows later, we are at the back gate of the school and decide to jump it.

I help Wheels up and over since I figured I'm the more athletic one and I can jump the gate on my own. This was a huge mistake. I manage to get up on the gate, but i end up being exhausted by the time i have to actually go over. Now, the gate has some spikes at the top precisely to prevent people from scaling it. Kinda like the one in this picture.

My arms give out and i end up putting the family jewels to the spike, since I was basically straddling the gate at this time. I do my best not to scream, so as to avoid alerting the guards. Somehow I manage to jump over, but my jacket is now ripped, my trousers are literally shredded in half from the crotch to my knees, and my arse and gonads are bleeding profusely. After deciding that I don't have any life threatening injuries, other than turning my nuts into a kebab. we make our way home, but my adventure was not quite over yet.


I used to live in a house that my parents built in the back yard of the old house. To get home, I had to go through the front yard, which was turned into a pizza place. Of course at the time I got home, the pizza place was full so I had the pleasure of exposing my near-naked anus, and balls that looked like tinned tomatoes to all the pizza enthusiasts of that fine establishment. I did my best to avoid any of the employees seeing me, since that would've almost certainly led to an awkward conversation.

The next morning I woke up with a massive headache, some nasty cuts, and a very bruised ego. I got rid of the clothes, since I had no reasonable explanation for the damage (and blood), and prayed that my mum doesn't go around asking where that nice jacket I had disappeared.