The Curse of Aaron Ramsey
Was Robin Williams killed by a footballer’s ‘kick of death’? ROB GANDY asks if Arsenal supporters will soon be singing ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.
Robin Williams, the great American actor, comedian, film producer and screenwriter, tragically committed suicide on 11 August 2014. The reasons put forward for this, discussed in various media, have varied but appear to include depression, the effects of the drugs he was taking for Parkinson’s Disease, financial worries, and a downturn in his acting career. However, surely the strangest cause attributed to his death is “the Curse of Aaron Ramsey”.
“Who is Aaron Ramsey?” many will ask – certainly outside of the United Kingdom, and particularly in America. They will find that he is a Welsh footballer, born in 1990, who plays midfield for Arsenal in the English Football Premier League and the Wales national football team. Arsenal signed him for £5 million in 2008 from his hometown club, Cardiff City. They will then, inevitably and rightly, ask the follow-up question: “What has Aaron Ramsey got to do with Robin Williams?”
The answer is: “Nothing”. But in its 13 August 2014 issue, that esteemed British newspaper the Daily Star headlined with: Robin Williams dies, Aaron Ramsey scores – has the Arsenal star’s curse returned?
The ‘curse’ is supposed to be that whenever Aaron Ramsey scores a goal, the death of a celebrity occurs. The Star piece goes on to say: “The strange phenomenon became apparent throughout 2011 and 2012 when a bigname celebrity died within days of the midfielder scoring a goal for Arsenal. And hours after the star scored in his club’s Community Shield victory on Sunday, the tragic death of comedy actor Robin Williams was announced. Many on Twitter have talked of the curse returning, while others slammed the disrespectful nature of the coincidence. There has not been a case of the curse since November 30, 2013, when Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker died in a car accident. Ramsey scored two goals against Cardiff that day. But after the midfield dynamo scored 14 more goals last season, the curse was forgotten. Previously, four celebrities passed away as the Welshman scored four goals for his club”.
Four major celebrity deaths are then listed as being linked to Ramsey finding the net:
Osama bin Laden was declared dead on 2 May 2011, and Ramsey bagged a goal against Manchester United the day before.
Apple guru Steve Jobs died at his home in California on 5 October 2011, and Ramsey hit the headlines by scoring in a north London derby against Spurs the weekend before.
Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was captured and killed by rebels on 20 October that year, and Ramsey was there to bag an injury-time winner against Marseilles in the Champions League.
Finally, Whitney Houston was found dead in her bathroom on 11 February 2012. Just hours before, the Gunner had struck against Sunderland.
Others believe he may have killed off other celebs with his goals, including legendary basketball player Ray Williams and Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky.
Now I know that it is questionable whether some of the above should be described as ‘celebrities’, but there is no doubt that they are all famous people, even if infamous might be more appropriate for Bin Laden and Gaddafi. So how on earth did this ‘curse’ come to prominence?
Nick Enoch asked the question about the alleged phenomenon in the Daily Mail on 15 February 2012, only four days after Houston died on 11 February, with the deaths of the other three celebrities occurring over the previous eight and a half months. As you need a minimum of three events even to be thinking about a pattern, it’s clear that someone picked up on it at some time between Gaddafi’s and Houston’s deaths.
At the time that reference was made to the ‘curse’, Ramsey had not been a prolific goal scorer: his goal at the time of Bin Laden’s death was only his sixth for Arsenal in three seasons, which had admittedly been disrupted by a serious leg break. His seventh goal for Arsenal was when Jobs died; his eighth was when Gaddafi died; and his ninth was on the day of Houston’s death. Spooky! Added momentum was given to the ‘curse’ when Taiwanese animators NMA produced a humorous but controversial cartoon clip of Ramsey as the ‘celebrity slayer’ – “Aaron Ramsey’s ‘Kick of Death’” – which went viral on the Internet.
Fortunately, there is nothing in the ‘curse’, and there is a very simple explanation. On average, the number of deaths every day in the UK is just over 1,500 and in the USA it is over 7,300, so if you include the number of deaths on the day before and the day after Ramsey scored a goal, then you treble these numbers to 4,500 and 21,900 respectively. It is virtually certain that there will be some celebrities included in such numbers, however these might be defined. There are specialist websites that list famous people that have died each day: The Life In Legacy website is primarily US-focused, but has lists of deaths for each week going back as far as 2007, with around 30-40 people recorded for each week; the IMDB website has pages for ‘Most Popular People With Date of Death’ in a given year; and Wikipedia has ‘Lists of Deaths By Year’ going back to 1987, with generally more than 10 deaths recorded for each day. So, there are inevitably going to be around a couple of dozen celebrities, or people famous for one thing or another, who die on the three days surrounding
an Aaron Ramsey goal. Just pick the one who is most famous and add him or her to the ‘curse’!
As stated above, the ‘curse’ was forgotten when Ramsey banged in 16 goals for Arsenal and two for Wales in 2013/14. So, just for fun – and definitely not to provide evidence for the ‘curse’ – I identified all the goals scored by Ramsey from when he first moved to Arsenal, and selected famous people that died on the day he scored, or a day either side, given that deaths in North America could be recorded as the day before because of time zones. I have used the above and similar Internet sources, and then created my own roll-call of Ramsey’s ‘victims’. The result is the list provided. You will see that Ramsey even brought the curtain down on George W Bush’s favourite pooch, and nearly nailed Nelson Mandela!
Interestingly, at the time of writing this article, Ramsey scored in Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Everton, and Sir Richard Attenborough, the celebrated Oscar-winning actor and director died the following day after a long illness. Attenborough was Life President and a lifelong supporter of Chelsea FC, Arsenal’s great north London rivals.
Clearly, it was easy to create this list, which shows that the ‘curse’ is nonsense. With so many deaths of celebrities each day and football matches now taking place every day of the week, it is possible to name any footballer and link a famous death to every time they score. I have every confidence that the story of the ‘curse’ started in a north London pub in a chat between some Arsenal supporters over a pint. Given Ramsey’s limited number
of goals at the time, his scoring a couple around the time of Jobs’s and Gaddafi’s deaths will have been very notable and generated jokey comments; this might have been reinforced by someone checking to see if anyone had died the previous time he scored and finding Osama bin Laden. And from there, it would have grown, with Houston’s death and the NMA cartoon sending it viral. The only difference between these celebrities and other famous people was that their deaths dominated the media for some time, just as Robin Williams’s did. Given the media references to the ‘curse’, I have no doubt that Ramsey and the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger will simply laugh it off; but I will be watching to see if Arsenal fans start to sing Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” every time Ramsey scores in the future.