Chiswick team's dribbling could have the answer

A group of Chiswick Griffin football players (who play in the Chiswick & District Sunday League) will be joining some of their Portuguese adversaries to watch Saturday’s big game.  Doesn't sound that strange until you discover precisely what the twenty men will be doing whilst they watch the game in a modern office in Hammersmith.

The two groups of ten men will be taking part in what could prove to be an orgasmic experience as part of an academic study to assess levels of stress and excitement whilst watching the World Cup quarter-final between England and Portugal in Gelsenkirchen.

Each of the “guinea pigs” will be wired to a heart monitor and will have to give regular samples of saliva. The experiment, which has already been carried out during England’s four matches against Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago, Sweden and Ecuador, judges every emotion including the agony and ecstasy of the 2-2 draw with Sweden.

Conducting this pioneering study is Loughborough University’s Professor Ron Maughan, who has so far concluded “The heart rates that we have recorded are in line with those experienced by an individual reaching sexual climax, and, in some cases, greater than that. We knew that football fans were passionate about their teams, but these results really prove that, for some, football is better than sex.”

June 29, 2006