NL: New York’s finest and hardest prove themselves soft on the issue of tissue

For some years the possibility of a permanent London NFL franchise has been discussed

Former American footballers Curtis Martin (left) and Dan Marino put their shirts on George Osborne while quizzing him about the grade of paper they’ll find in the loo at 11 Downing Street (Getty)

Of all the varying shapes and sizes of superstar out there in the sporting firmament that might require protection from the dangers of the perilously thin bog roll of England, the American football player is not the obvious choice.

This, after all, is a sport that is currently in the process of handing out more than a billion dollars in compensation after the crash helmets worn by its players were not, it seems, sufficient to prevent the onset of impact-induced degenerative brain disease in thousands of its players.

And yet as the New York Jets touch down in London – nice and gently, we hope – for tomorrow’s match at Wembley against the Miami Dolphins, we learn that with them has come some 350 rolls of their own toilet paper to, according to team boss Aaron Degerness, “replace the thinner version used in England”.

It has always been generally assumed that the Jets took their name from the proximity of their old stadium to New York’s LaGuardia airport, and unless there is something unpleasant they’re not telling us, the high water mark in the world of marginal gains has surely now been set – a fraction of the thickness of a piece of toilet tissue.

The other details seem almost normal by comparison. That a ship has been loaded with 5,000 items, for the use of all six NFL teams deigning to grace medieval old sandpaper-arsed Londinium with their presence over the next three weeks, from extension cords to gauze pads to particular breakfast cereals, is absolutely fine.

(On this last one, by the way, I am not overly shocked. Fifteen years ago, I worked on a UK-based summer camp for American teenagers, and once took a terrified call from a Californian mother demanding to know whether “you can get Golden Grahams in Europe”. In the end, her daughter turned up laden with several boxes of her own. It’s possible she now plays tight end for the Jacksonville Jaguars.)

Clearly seeking to dispel that most unfair stereotype of the American abroad, the Jets’ long-serving kit man Gus Granneman also explained the risks of washing clothes outside the US of A.

“You’re always scared about going to another country and your laundry comes back in a ball or something like that,” he told the New York Times. “You don’t even tell him low heat. You say, ‘I want this at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever it is Celsius,’ because ‘low heat’ might be something entirely different to him.”

Even the President, of course, who has a fleet of matching reinforced limousines transported by cargo plane everywhere he goes, doesn’t pack his own toilet roll, at least according to what the secret service are prepared to tell you.

With the USS Charmin making its slow and steady way across the pond, NFL chiefs have been meeting the Chancellor at 11 Downing Street where, we imagine, even in these austere times, the facilities remain suitably luxuriant.

For some years the possibility of a permanent London NFL franchise has been discussed and we must now conclude this sudden top-level involvement can only be to iron out the details for some sort of Berlin airlift style arrangement to guarantee the continual replenishment of these crucial supplies.

Still, who are we to criticise? It was Sir David Brailsford of Team Sky and formerly the British track cycling team who first demanded such things as having all of his Tour de France riders’ pillows, beds and blankets driven from hotel to hotel. Before that – and this is where it gets really crazy – other contestants in that sport would inject themselves with other people’s blood just to gain that crucial competitive edge.

Besides, if we are to welcome to these backward shores the NFL, with all its recent propensity for drugs and guns and domestic violence, we might live to regret taking issue with its players’ curious need for extra thick tissue.