Each flight played a Swiss of seven 10-board matches.
He lit a cigarette and spent the remainder of the flight playing Final Fantasy X.
Lille VEGA is packed and throbbing: an American group, Wilco, is in full flight, playing rock-and-roll that seems born in your own solar plexus.
The flight itself was uneventful except when the man sitting next to me yanked off his prosthetic leg, waved it in the air and announced "Who needs legroom!" He spent the rest of the flight playing video poker and checking his watch against his flight itinerary.
A veteran of hard-bitten parts in 24, The Pacific and CSI, Dale had a single-scene outing in Flight, playing an emaciated cancer patient who exists to act as a wheezing existential cupid to Denzel Washington's boozy pilot and Kelly Reilly's friendly junkie.
A quarter of the 373 foreign players in the top flight played fewer than 10 games last season.
Barring one season back in the Championship, they spent 20 years in the top flight, playing in the Champions League and winning a League Cup.
They have risen to the top flight playing a brand of attractive football which has won many admirers this season and, crucially, enough points to ensure safety.
Mancini, whose side sit eighth in Italy's top flight, played down the effect of a busy schedule of fixtures for his side.
"Their situation weighed on me the entire flight, playing multiple scenarios in my head, and it broke my heart," Funderberg wrote.
For a 28-year-old whose career is devoid of top-flight playing time, that is quite the gamble.
