THE DEFINITION OF BAD LUCK

Roberto Martinez sighed and said, “ We were just a victim of bad luck. ”

The Wigan Athletic manager had seen his team play well and lose to a dubious penalty. The opposition should also have had a man sent off but another incident distracted the inexperienced referee.

Martinez is one of the most promising managers in the Premier League. He comes across as a top bloke. Even in defeat he answered questions with grace and humour. Few losing managers do that.

Shrewder judges than this one believe, and hope, he will go a long way.

But his concluding comment to the radio interview produced a wry smile from his questioner.

No, Roberto, he thought, I know who was a real victim of bad luck.

38 years ago the questioner’s father had taken him to a football match as a birthday treat. Arsenal had performed well but lost by a single goal and had seemed to be playing against 12 men.

The reporter-to-be was worked up and becoming even more so as he moaned about bad luck, a bent ref and the oppo’s dirty bastard of a centre half.

“Let me tell you about bad luck,” said the father.

It is September 25th 1945. The war is over. The Japanese have surrendered and the guards have fled the prisoner of war camp where Frank Lennard Payne had been incarcerated for three and a half years.

But the Allied forces had yet to reach Borneo and the inmates of Batu Lintang had to stay put in their huts on stilts. The Royal Australian Air Force were flying daily sorties over the camp parachuting in food, newspapers and other basic necessities in torpedo shaped containers.

Frank, like most of the inmates, was a civilian working in a quiet corner of the Empire when the Japanese invaded Borneo in 1942.

He had survived malnutrition, disease and beatings from the, mostly Korean, guards.

Despite their impending freedom the mood among the survivors on that September morning was sombre. Too many had died for it to be anything else.

But there was tinned fruit and condensed milk for breakfast and all the talk was of how quickly they could get out of the wretched place.

On hearing the planes overhead Frank made his way to the door, started down the steps and was decapitated by one of the torpedos whose parachute had failed to open.

My father was just behind his friend when it happened and told the story to stop my rant.

For someone who is now paid to watch grown men play games it sometimes helps to think of Frank.