Notts County player proves his brains arent in his feet!
Normally when footballers watch Countdown it's only to work out how many naughty words they can form out of the jumble of letters Carol Vorderman shoves on that weird blue board of hers. Not any more though. Notts County midfielder Neil MacKenzie has been lighting up the Channel 4 numbers and words game in recent days, even though his bid to become an 'Octochamp' (that means someone who wins eight games in a row) came to an end on Monday. He could still get in the winners' knock-out competition at the end of the year though, so his Countdown dream isn't over just yet.
MacKenzie is the first professional footballer to appear on the series in its 25-year history. He cruised through the auditions, and wowed presenters Vorderman and Des O'Connor (who, in a neat reversal, was himself a professional footballer with Northampton Town before moving into showbiz) with his dominance over digits and love of lexicon. Says associate producer Kate Horton: "Neil has a broad vocabulary, which is essential to do well on this show."
MacKenzie's run saw him edge out a dramatic victory in which he won by correctly guessing the infamous Countdown conundrum before his opponent on his first day, but the County man is taking it all in his stride. "I watched it when I was a kid, and have done ever since," he told the Nottingham Evening Post. "I have always come up with words, and the numbers. My mum joked I seemed to be okay, so I ought to go for an audition. I did, and ended up on the show."
But surely an intelligent footballer is an affront to nature of some sort? "I did not do particularly well at school, but have always seemed to have a knack for this," continued MacKenzie. "I have always been pretty solid on the words and good at the conundrums - so the important thing was not to disgrace myself. The adrenaline does get running. But Des O'Connor was great and he makes you relax, so the nerves went after about five minutes of the show."
Another player who has been showing that his brain isn't just there to help him walk without falling over is Conall Murtagh of Wrexham. The 23-year-old has just graduated from Manchester University with a 2:1 degree in physiology, though the footballer inside him was perhaps partly responsible for this as he managed to incorporate video games into his studies. Murtagh looked into whether the Nintendo Wii and its wireless controllers could be used to help people lose weight and solve the nation's obesity problem.
