Check Your Fridge. Bruce Grobbelar Might Be in There.

Here’s a nice little gambling commercial from PaddyPower, with former Liverpool keeper Bruce Grobbelar jumping out of a guy’s fridge to refund a losing bet.

I like the nice little spaghetti legs touch, a reference to Grobbelar’s 1984 European Cup Final penalty save vs Roma:

Though I’m sure the irony of Grobbelar handing money to a punter won’t be lost on anyone who was watching the English Premier League back in 1994, when The Sun newspaper accused the keeper of taking bribe money to fix matches for a betting syndicate.

He was charged twice, but the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict in either case, and he was cleared in 1997.

However… when Grobbelar sued The Sun for libel he eventually lost the case in the House of Lords, who ruled that Grobbelar “had in fact acted in a way in which no decent or honest footballer would act”.

Grobbelar had to pay his own legal costs and was declared bankrupt as a result. Which may explain why he’s now doing commercials for PaddyPower.

Category: Betting