MOTD to Stop Screening Ugly Footballers

The football world was plunged into crisis last night as the BBC's flagship football highlights programme Match of the Day defended its decision to stop screening football matches involving "ugly" footballers.

Following new government guidelines on child traumatic stress the BBC has issued a directive calling on all departments to look closely at high risk programmes where children could be traumatized by what they see on their screens.

Some of the Premiership's biggest clubs will be affected by the ban, including champions Man Utd, who have "Shrek lookalike" Wayne Rooney on the ugly list, and free-spending high flyers Manchester City, who's Carlos Tevez and Joleon Lescott have already been warned by police to to stay indoors after 8pm.

Though Match of the Day and its sister programme Match of the Day 2 are televised after the watershed, producers are aware that half the programmes' audience are children under the age of 10, hence the light-hearted, whimsical and condescending tone of Gary Lineker's presenting.

Referring to the 'Beardsley Debate', when more than a thousand children needed psychiatric treatment and/or counselling in 1993 after watching Newcastle's hunchbacked beast Peter Beardsley's post-match interview following a hatrick in the Magpies' 4-0 thumping of Wimbledon, Match of the Day producer, Mark Mantoman, said the governent position meant they can no longer "take such chances."

"We are currently in the process of identifying those clubs who have ugly players in their first team squads, with a view to enter negotiations to explore ways of avoiding the loss of revenue incurred by the loss of television fees."

"There are many suggestions on the table. Editing techniques would be useless if the uglies were to score a goal, and employing digital pixelation of the players' faces could be risky, as such techniques can sometimes enhance the deformities of the unfortunate creature's facial features."

"It's a difficult one. We can't ask managers not to play their grotesque palyers, but we may ask them to consider making them wear hoods, masks or have plastic surgery. A compromise may be possible, whereas we ask managers to release their team sheets one day in advance to enable us to drop the matches from our schedule. Failure to find a solution may result in those clubs being excluded entirely from future programmes."

It is understood, however, that the BBC have drawn up a system of grading players' suitability to be televised. The numbered Ugly Scale proposed ranges through 1 - 'ginger or back-of-the-team-photo jobs' like Stoke and Portsmouth stars Dave Kitson and Nwankwo Kanu, 2 - 'thuggish, scary and villainous' such as Aston Villa defenders Richard Dunne and James Collins, 3 - 'weird and/or plain ugly' like Spurs beanstalk Peter Crouch and Villa Laa-Laa lookalike Gabriel Agbonlahor, 4 - abominable and/or deformed, such as United ogre Rooney, Everton's Frankenstine freak Phil Neville and Liverpool alien Dirk Kyut, and 5 - complete write-offs such as Tevez and Lescott.

In a pro-active move "aimed at maintaining fairness and an unbiased approach to the new guidelines" the BBC confirmed it had already sacked Match of the Day 2 presenter Adrian Chiles, who's rating on the proposed Ugly Scale was 5+.

The ban will also be extended to the BBC's new Football League programme which follows Match of the Day on Saturday nights and covers Championship, League One and League Two matches.

"There are some monsters playing in the lower leagues - some species we are yet to discover," said a BBC spokesperson, adding, "We apologise to fans but maintain we have to be dilligent in our responsibility to safeguard children from nightmare-inducing images on our programmes."

It's not clear if the ban will include managers, but Harry Redknapp's lawyers are said to be preparing a legal challenge, lest any such moves are initiated.