Finally, I soccer game I would like to watch!

Whether it has any bearing on Monday’s crunch Euro 2008 match between the two countries is debatable but Austria drew first blood on Sunday when their topless women’s soccer team beat Germany 10-5.

The traditional swapping of shirts afterwards was not an option as the six-a-side teams wore nothing but G-strings, with the national colours painted on to their bare skin.

The football may not have been of the highest quality but that did not temper the enthusiasm of a mostly male crowd boosted by a sizeable media presence only too happy to desert Euro 2008 training for an hour or two.

The match was organised by a chat room website.

Austria were delighted with a victory they hoped would be a morale-booster for their male counterparts but was not without its serious side.

“I hope our men will take heart from that tomorrow. We played pretty hard, we even had some injuries, like I for example broke my toe nail,” 29-year-old bank employee Doris Fastenmeir told Reuters.

The Germans took defeat sportingly and joined their opponents for alcopops and dancing at a beach club alongside the Danube.

“I was supposed to hold the balls but I really have no idea how to do that,” German keeper Jana Bach said.

“Maybe it is because I am not all that much into soccer. I am more into shoes to be honest.”

The verdict of the onlookers?

“They might have to work on their technique a bit but it was definitely a rather pleasant game to watch and a very nice version of the ‘beautiful game’,” said Rolf Hansen from Berlin.

Reuters

A US patrol officer stopped a car for suspicious driving and found to his surprise that a drunk mother had let her one-year-old son take the wheel, the Ohio state police department said.

Marya Green, 29, of Goshen Township, near Cincinnati, was arrested late on Tuesday and found to have a 0.11 per cent blood alcohol level – well above the 0.08 per cent legal limit, said the town’s police department spokeswoman Mandy Storer.

Her licence already suspended for a previous drink-driving offence, Green had put her infant son behind the steering wheel, while two other children aged eight and five were also travelling in the car, she added.

“Let’s be honest, a one-year-old child doesn’t have the skill to drive a car. We all know that,” Storer said.

“But he was riding, the hands were on the wheel. She was allowing him to steer.”

It was Green’s third drink-driving offence in six years, she said.

AFP