Flaks send hacks spinning in football clash

Glum faces City desks of Fleet Street on Monday morning, among male staff at least, after financial journalists suffered a dispiriting 3-0 drubbing in a football match against their PR counterparts in the annual Hacks v Flaks clash on Sunday. However, the pride of the hacks was mercifully restored by the women's netball teams, whose A team beat the flacks by 38 points to 30, with the B team also triumphant, by 28 points to 14. The footy loss ended a two-year winning streak for the hacks, and Monkey hates to admit it, but the result may have been worse without two barnstorming saves by Tom Harvey, the Times scribbler and hacks shot-stopper. On the day, the defensive prowess of the flacks proved enough to keep even Mark Kleinman, the Hacks striker and Sky News chief City scoop-getter, off the score sheet. Clearly the hacks' pre-match tactics – dig up stories about UBS requiring Richard Morton, its PR chief and former semi-professional footballer, to hurriedly leave the pitch in a mad panic – failed to bear fruit.