Playing the Moldovans At Tennis

It doesn't take much - "£100 is usually sufficient" - to persuade Tony Hawks to take off on notoriously bizarre and hilarious adventures in response to a bet. And so it is, that one afternoon in Balham, a pointless argument with a friend concludes in a bet - that Tony can't beat all eleven members of the Moldovan soccer team at tennis. As natural sportsmen, Tony's friend argues, they will beat Tony easily. "One of them," he reasons, "is bound to be very good." And with the loser of the bet agreeing to strip naked on Balham High Road and sing the Moldovan national anthem, this one was just too good to resist. And so this was how Tony found himself embarking on an extraordinary quest which would see him travel from England to Moldova to Transnistria, Northern Ireland, and eventually to Israel, in an attempt to get Moldovan football players on to the tennis court.