Ron Jans Becomes The 10th Man & Who Knew Marijuana Was A Banned Substance?

By: chris | March 9th, 2009

Ron Jans is quickly becoming The Offside’s favorite Eredivisie gaffer – yes, even more than Steve McClaren and his Dutch accent. The last time his Groningen team took on Heerenveen, he showed the ref a one finger salute.

This weekend, once more against Heerenveen, Jans felt similarly regarding the referees performance levels. His team had seen two red cards and down to 9 men in the 90th, he decided they needed a little bit of assistance with his horses clinging to a valiant 1-1 scoreline. So with the ball heading towards his coach’s box, he took one for the team and booted the ball into the stands – excellent technique, might we add – to give his lads a breather. Now that, ladies & gents, is a players’ coach. Particularly so since he was sent off and must be ticking off the Dutch disciplinary commission quite a bit these days.

Problem is this happened (2:00 in the vid) just moments after Jans was sent off, while he was watching from the tunnel:

Not exactly the desired outcome, was it. Regardless, this boot is something he’ll be only to happy to repeat, should the occasion arise:

“The Heerenveen fans sang about it a few times,” the colourful Jans said of the middle-finger he’d given the ref in the last match with Heerenveen, grinning from ear to ear. “First I thought they were singing ‘Ron Jans, show your penis’ but it was ‘Ron Jans, show your finger.’ But neither seemed wise.”

If that sounded like remorse on Jans’s part, it wasn’t. “This isn’t something that’s going into my booklet of regrets and things to learn from,” he said. “I hope that maybe it taught the referees something though.”

Because we’re nothing if not painfully thorough – at least when it comes to naughty words in foreign languages – a quick skim in the Dutch dictionary indicates ‘finger’ in Dutch is ‘vinger’ and ‘penis’ is….’penis’. So figure that one out yourselves.

But Ron Jans can do anything he likes – provided he sticks to his rule of not showing us either of the aforementioned – because the man’s just brilliant.

However, brilliant as he, and his mouth, may be, Ron Jans wasn’t the provider of the Dutch quote of the weekend:

On Monday, De Graafschap’s left-back Purrel Fränkel tested positive for marijuana use and was suspended for a month. “I didn’t know it was one of the banned substances,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Cooome ooon, dude. Dutch drug laws may be a bit more lax than most, but WADA would ban water if it could.