Anger management

If you'd enjoyed a 22 year career how would you dream of your retirement? Take your leave at the end of successful league campaign? Waltz off into the sunset with a cup win? Or enjoy a glamour testimonial before calling it a day?

You probably wouldn't fantasise about the end coming with a two year ban.

A two year ban received for getting sent off six times in the same match.

But that's exactly the fate that befell Hawick United's Paul Cooper.

Paul got a touch frustrated after getting his second booking in a match against Pencaitland. He unloaded his frustrations on the referee in what we can only imagine was an apocalyptic bout of swearing in which he chanelled the spirt of Malcom Tucker and Roy Keane.

In the course of the tirade referee Andy Lyons brandished a further five red cards.

I know it was my fault that I got into trouble. I completely overreacted after I had been sent off and I know I said things to the referee I should not have.

But I felt so frustrated as I honestly wasn’t to blame for the incident that led to me being sent off.

After the game I went to see the referee in his dressing room and I apologised to him for losing it and he accepted his apology. I was given the chance to go to Hampden Park in Glasgow but it meant taking a day off work and I couldn’t afford to do this so I had to wait until I got a letter to see what my ban would be.

Unfortunately I’ve been in bother before with bans and I expected six months. But I was absolutely stunned when I got two years. I will just have to go with the flow, accept things and find something else to do on a Saturday.

Paul's nickname, incidentally, is Santa.

It's not just the players that have certain issue with anger management at times. Here's a supporter going off on one: