Dinton's No.17 shirt - in his prime

There was an interesting article in the newspaper at the weekend on the subject of people’s “guilty pleasures”. The mathematician Marcus du Sautoy (interesting twat name) listed his guilty pleasure as football shirts.

Read what he has to say below, then just ask yourself: who is it who plays in Dinton Casuals’ number 17 shirt? And then ask yourself: who is the team's joint top scorer since the middle of November?

“My guilty pleasure: my number 17 Recreativo Hackney football shirt. Every footballer cares about the number shirt they play in…

“When the shirts of Recreativo Hackney get pulled out of the kitbag on a Sunday morning, I wait patiently until the 17 shirt appears, then grab it possessively. As a mathematician, each number has its own special character for me. 17 is a prime number, an indivisible number. The ancient Chinese thought numbers had sexuality and primes for them were the macho numbers, essential for surviving Recreativo’s battles on the Hackney Marshes...

“I know that my obsession with my shirt number is no more than superstitious nonsense and goes against the analytic rational mind that I use the rest of the week. But when my team were languishing at the bottom of the Super Sunday League Division 2, I persuaded them to change our kit and we all now play in prime numbers, from 2 to 43. The next season we got promoted into the first division. That’s proof enough for me of the power of numbers.”

You can read the full Guardian article by clicking here.