Unexpected fruits of success -- beer, bananas and vibrators

After 120 scoreless minutes, the A League grand final between Sydney FC and Perth Glory went to a penalty shootout.

Sydney goalkeeper, Andrew Redmayne adopted some strange tactics in the shootout and somehow managed to save 4 of the 5 penalties to give Sydney a 4 – 1 win.

For their efforts, Sydney was awarded the A League Trophy, which has been likened by many to a toilet seat.

Surely, a trophy shaped like a toilet must be the most bizarre trophy in world sport, I hear you say.

So I decided to surf the interweb thingy and find out what other bizarre trophies are on offer.

In cricket, the winner of the test series between Australia and England famously wins a tiny little urn, filled with the ashes of some bails burnt back in the 1800s when England lost a test series.

And the great news for the Aussies is that when we win, we don’t even get to take the trophy home because the English claim it is too old and too fragile to travel — an argument used until recently by Cardinal George Pell.

In US College football, teams from Illinois and Ohio State fight it out for the Illibuck trophy.

From 1925, the winner has received, I kid you not, a live turtle.

But, after that turtle died, they replaced it with a wooden statue in the shape of a turtle.

I guess slow and steady does win the race.

Golf has had its fair share of interesting behaviour and even more interesting clothes.

In Japan, the winner of the Yamaha Ladies Open takes home a speedboat.

The winner of the Italian Open gets his weight in Grana Padano cheese. (The organisers are in serious financial strife if John Daly ever gets his old form back and ventures to Italy to compete).

Cycling has a few interesting trophies too.

The winner of the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey wins a large hand of bananas.

No shortage of vitamin K among the cyclists.

Over in Belgium, the winner of their Cycling Tour gets a keg of beer.

I’ve got a good idea. Let’s get super fit, ride my Malvern Star around Belgium so that I can win a keg of beer, which will surely render me less fit than when I started.

I thought I’d leave my best till last.

One word. NASCAR. A sport based on designing cars to allow whiskey bootleggers to outrun the police.

The winner of the Martinville NASCAR event gets a grandfather clock. What a waste of time (pardon the pun). Half of all NASCAR drivers and fans probably an’t tell the time without a digital watch.

Then there’s the Sylvania 300. The winner gets to hold aloft a trophy shaped like a lobster. Why? Why the hell not?

In Kansas, the winner of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series wins a replica of SpongeBob SquarePants. Now there’s a trophy worth winning.

I honestly thought there couldn’t be a stranger trophy in the world of sport than what the good old boys of Nascar can dish up.

That is until I heard about the Asturius Squash Championships in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo.

The male winners get a nice trophy, the sort that Darrell Kerrigan would take straight to the pool room.

The female winners, also get a pool room worthy trophy, but as a bonus, they also get a gift pack that contains a foot scrubber, to remove dead skin from their feet, a waxing kit to remove some unwanted body hair, and finally a vibrating dildo to, to, to . . . do whatever takes your fancy.

This is no joke, if you don’t believe me, look it up.

But after a good laugh, which went on for much longer than it should have, I started thinking, what were the organisers thinking.

I mean, did they have a meeting and someone remarked that some of the women didn’t seem to be walking freely.

I’ve got an idea, exclaimed Manuel, why don’t we give them something to exfoliate some skin from their feet?

What a great idea said another.

Another commented that some of the girls had a bit of a forest under the arm pits. What about a waxing kit? What a great idea, they all bellowed.

Any finally, Manuel said, they never seem to smile much — how can we put a smile on their dial?

Seriously, what were they thinking. Surely they could have found a nice cook book, some whitegoods or a book on how to please your husband?

While some countries try to bring the gap between mens and womens sport closer together, the Spanish seem intent on turning the gap into a chasm.

And remember, there’s no such thing as too much sport!