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Tim Healey, heroic and solitary figure, defends the right of a man to wear his ponytail in peace...

I think we all knew, didn’t we, that David Seaman’s secure place in the England goal was jeopardised from the moment he sprang that ponytail on us. No, Seamo, no. Our boys are all sporting the slap-head look. The ponytail is for the expensive foreign imports; the creative midfielders, and the wingers with pace. That hair suggested some crisis of identity at the very heart of the England defence - a crisis which, in these troubled times, we did not need.

I say these things as a lifelong Arsenal supporter and I have to admit, a ponytail wearer myself. Yes, it’s true. I started at the suggestion of my wife; and when I tell you she got me to wear a ponytail in the hope that I’d look like that Marty Pellow out of Wet Wet Wet you’ll get some idea of its vintage. Like Marty Pellow? A forlorn hope I'm afraid. Actually, what I looked like was a Colombian drug-dealer, or one of Frank Zappa’s sidemen - you know - the ugly blokes who scowl at you from the back of his albums, 40-year-old CIA men disguised as hippies.

Still, in for a penny, in for a pound. I never liked those daft little sawn-off ponytails, and I let mine grow long and luxuriant. It wasn’t long before I discovered some of its hazards. Pruning an Albertine in the back garden one day, I turned my head suddenly to find hoisted onto tiptoe, my ponytail snared so tight in the thorns that I couldn’t close my eyelids. I was caught - caught like a stag in a thicket and making goggle-eyed gesticulations at the house, waving with the secateurs. Help! Help! And Jo waving back from the kitchen. Yes, darling, prune if you like, prune if you like. (Kids, I think your father’s finally lost it).

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