Spit and Swine!

Becks shows his expertise with "spit pieces"

The Health Protection Agency has determined that spitting could lead to the spread of the H1N1 virus and asked footballers from refraining to do that on the pitch.

''Footballers, like the rest of us, wouldn't spit indoors so they shouldn't do it on the football pitch. If they are spitting near other people it could certainly increase the risk of passing on infections."

The agency gets a bit moralistic.

''It's about setting examples for young people who idolize them,' the spokesman was quoted as saying.

Recently, players from Blackburn and Bolton were diagnosed with swine flu.

In the French Ligue, a match this weekend between Marseille and PSG was suspended when Ludovic Giuly and Mamadou Sakho went down with swine flu. In the USA, Landon Donovan also suffered swine flu after returning from a World Cup qualifier against Mexico in August.

The CNN article has other examples. I thought only baseball players were capable of such feats.