‘housery (verb): an attempt to gain a competitive advantage through unfair means which can involve winding up the opposition. Often prefixed with a slang term for faeces. See also: gamesmanship, the dark arts.
Bristol Rovers striker John Marquis fought fire with fire during Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Derby County and has earned the plaudits from across the footballing fraternity with a truly world class moment of ‘housery.
Rovers had endured some quite blatantly cynical and obvious time-wasting by Rams goalkeeper Joe Wildsmith throughout the contest at the Mem, as the 27-year-old decided to go to ground in near-slow motion every time he got his hands on the goal, eating up the clock as Paul Warne’s side thought they had eked out a unspectacular but significant 1-0 win.
The irony was that by engaging in such tactics, Wildsmith actually helped add time on the clock as fourth official Paul Lister-Flynn signalled an extra seven minutes to the designated 90 minutes and with the Gas down 1-0, and a fervent Mem driving them forwards, a diagonal ball into the box saw Derby’s Harvey White haul back Antony Evans to give the hosts a late, late penalty.
Evans kept his head from the spot and as he was joined by his teammates in front of a jubilant Thatchers end, Marquis - having initially stood over the spot-kick to shield his teammate from pressure and any further Derby-related gamesmanship - showed further quick-thinking, just of a more mischievous nature.
Clasping the ball with both hands, Marquis dived forward to mimic Wildsmith’s actions all afternoon adding to the delicious sting in the tail in north Bristol.
Championed by Rovers on TikTok under the headline, “Some top tier housery from John”, with their video reaching more than 700,000 views and 88,000 likes, the footage has since been widely shared by Sky Sports and various other digital platforms to the delight of supporters both of a Rovers persuasion and elsewhere.
While undoubtedly an extremely amusing celebration, it is also of note because one of the main observations manager Joey Barton highlighted when he took over the club in February 2021 was that, as a club, the Gas were too nice. Such acts are hardly Ian Alexander-esque moments of brutality in a tackle but do show this group of players can stick up for themselves and don’t care for reputations of other “bigger” clubs in the division . But also, and most importantly, they’re going to have fun doing it.
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