"On 11 November 1987, Mark Hughes played for Wales in Prague and was then flown back to Munich to help Bayern beat Borussia Moenchengladbach in the Bundesliga," wrote Robert Sleigh last week. "Admittedly, he came on as a substitute after being flown to Munich by private jet, but anyway: when was the last time any professional player played two competitive games on the same day?"

Hughes wasn't the first player Munich had asked to play twice up on a single day. Graeme Coleman and Christian Mohr Boisen write to tell of Soren Lerby's double-header. "During a qualifying match against Ireland on 13 November 1985, Lerby left in the 58th minute as he had to catch a private jet to fly back to Germany to play, as a substitute, for his club Bayern Munich in a cup match on the same day," writes Christian. "On that busy day, his country won 4-1 in Dublin while his club drew 1-1 in Bochum."

More recently, colourful keeper Jorge Campos did likewise, doubling up for club and country. "On 16 June 1996, there was a double-header at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, with USA v Mexico following the MLS game between LA Galaxy and Tampa Bay Mutiny," writes Joe Tiernan. "Jorge Campos played for the Galaxy in the league match and then for Mexico in the international." The international, it should be pointed out, was a US Cup game, which only just edges into our "competitive" criteria.

But for some players simply playing football twice on one day isn't enough. Doncaster's Chris Balderstone, writes John Briggs, made history in September 1975 when he made 51 not out for Leicestershire against Derbyshire in cricket's county championship before heading over to Belle Vue to play for Rovers against Brentford in an evening kick-off. The following day he donned his whites once more and completed a sparkling innings of 116.

Turkish midfielder Can Bartu combined his early playing days with Fenerbahce with a promising sideline with the club's basketball team. "Bartu had started his sports career playing basketball," writes Zafer Say, "and even once persuaded to start playing football, he carried on performing on the basketball court until the age of 21, when he quit basketball for good. On 25 January 1957 he helped Fenerbahce win a football game 4–0, scoring twice and creating the others, and in the evening of the same day, he scored 10 points in a 44–43 win for Fener's basketball side."

FAT CONTROLLER XI

"I was watching a Motherwell home game recently with a friend whose three-year-old is daft about Thomas the Tank Engine," begins Stewart Taylor. "The game must have been a bit boring as we counted the number of players with first names from the TV series. We got two – Tom (Thomas) Hateley and Jim (James) O'Brien. Has a team ever started a game in the UK having all 11 players as Thomas characters?"

We knew someone out there wouldn't be able to resist the challenge of a creating a team for the fictional anthropomorphic steam locomotive and his friends. Step forward Matt West:

"England's squad for the 1950 World Cup would have allowed them to select an all-train XI of Bert Williams in goal, a five-man defence of Alfie Ramsay, James Taylor, Henry Cockburn, Bill Wright and Bill Nicholson, a midfield trio of James Mullen, Thomas Finney and Stanley Matthews, with Stanley Mortensen and Jack Milburn up front. Pretty sure I shouldn't feel as pleased about that as I do."

PLAYER PUNISHMENTS (2)

Last week we looked at the teams who had been punished for poor performances (or, in some cases, punished for being Iraqi and good at football). Taking a slightly different tack, Alan Duncan writes to tell us of the maverick former Dundee United manager Jim McLean, who once withheld a win bonus from his entire squad following a 6-1 victory over Motherwell for "failing to provide enough entertainment".

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"My wife and I have won international caps for the British Virgin Islands women's and men's football teams," wrote Ian Jamieson, back in those halcyon days of 2007. "Are we the only such couple or are there any instances of other married couples getting international caps?"

Impressive a feat as it is, Ian, you are not the only members of this exclusive club. For instance, the Portsmouth defender Hermann Hreidarsson and his wife Ragna Lóa Stefánsdóttir – also a centre-back – both own a fancy collection of Iceland caps. "I know some footballers' wives are not very interested in football, but Ragna is different," he told the Sun. "I don't know any other footballer who married a player!" He didn't look very hard. According to reader Hrafnkell Kristjánsson, "Haraldur Ingólfsson, formerly with Akranes (and for a short spell Aberdeen as well), and his wife Jónína Víglundsdóttir both played for Iceland between 1992 and 1995."

In Scandinavia, Fredrik Andersson notes that "both Hans Eskilsson and Malin Swedberg played for Sweden. She played 78 times for Sweden, while he is the less successful in the couple with just eight caps. Today they are married with two kids and she is a pundit on Swedish TV." And Zimbabwean reader Hurugu Pasvani offers Esrom Nyandoro and his wife Ruth Banda – "Nyandoro has been capped more than 30 times by the Warriors, while his wife, who has since retired from international football, has been capped by the Mighty Warriors more than 15 times."

Another couple that share a collection of caps as well as a conjugal association, are the former United States captain Claudio Reyna and his wife Danielle Egan, who has six US caps to her name. And north of the border, the Vancouver Whitecaps' Alan Douglas writes that "Steve Kindel and Sara Maglio of the Whitecaps and Canada won four and six caps respectively during their careers."

However, the highest-profile, nearest-miss example of an international footballing couple must be Ronaldo and Milene Domingues, who first got together after he spotted her on television. The Brazil striker eventually popped the question, while Milene broke the world keepy-uppy record, gave birth to baby Ronald ("My wife and I eat a lot at McDonald's so we chose Ronald," explained the toothy one) and was selected for Brazil's 2003 women's World Cup campaign. Sadly she never played, the pair divorced and she remains without an international cap to this day.

More thousands more questions and answers, take a trip through our Knowledge archive.

Can you help?

"When was the first time that a club fielded a starting XI with at least one player from all six continents (or major confederations)?" wonders Chris Cuomo.

"As youth, I played for a team that was notorious for its physical approach to the game; think of a squad composed entirely of 12-year-old Chopper Harris's and Norman Hunters and you are getting close," writes Michael Shaffer. "Once, in the first five or so minutes of a match we managed to rack up seven or eight free-kicks awarded for small-time offenses committed by different players – none of which merited yellow cards. Nevertheless, after the eighth or so foul the referee called over our captain and coach and issued the captain a yellow card. Surprisingly, the referee made it clear to both that the yellow card was being issued to the whole team. Thus, the next foul committed by any of our players that would merit a yellow card (probably in our case for persistent infringement) would be a second yellow/red card and ejection from the match. I was wondering: Is there any actual law that allows for the referee to make such a decision and have there been any similar situations at the professional level?"

"While looking at an old league table on Wikipedia (don't ask why), I noticed that Arsenal finished second in the First Division in 1972-73, three points behind Liverpool," notes Vincent Lacey. "The table gave notes on European qualification for the following season: Liverpool went into the European Cup, Tottenham went into the Uefa Cup because they won the League Cup, and Sunderland (from the Second Division) went into the Cup Winners' Cup after winning the FA Cup. But while third-placed Leeds, fourth-placed Ipswich and fifth-placed Wolves went into the Uefa Cup, Arsenal didn't go into Europe at all! I couldn't find any reason for this; had they upset someone at Uefa, or did someone forget to send an application for entry?"

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