Wayne Hennessey not the first sports star who had some explaining to do

January has barely begun and already Wayne Hennessey has become the year’s first victim of one of those misunderstandings that occasionally bedevil sportspeople.

The Crystal Palace goalkeeper was snapped in the background of a picture posted on Instagram by his German team-mate Max Meyer at a celebratory dinner following the club’s FA Cup victory over Grimsby. As he addresses the camera, the Welshman’s arm is raised at a 45-degree angle and his hand is over his mouth in a manner best described as Basil Fawlty trying not to mention the war.

Appreciating that making a gesture of such kind may not be the smartest of images, Hennessey was quick to explain what he was actually up to. "I waved and shouted at the person taking the picture to get on with it and at the same time put my hand over my mouth to make the sound carry,” he wrote on Twitter. “It's been brought to my attention that frozen in a moment by the camera this looks like I am making a completely inappropriate type of salute."

Of course, we cannot possibly know what Hennessey's intentions were, so we are going to take him at his word, even if the anti-racism charity Kick It Out have submitted the incriminating picture of him to the Football Association for "further investigation".

But there is undeniably a proud history of sporting excuses that - to put it generously - test our levels of credulity.

Wayne Hennessey appeared to be making the gesture in a picture posted by a Crystal Palace team-mate Credit: Reuters

Ask the Chelsea fan who told magistrates that he had not made 13 Nazi salutes during a recent game with Tottenham but had instead been “waving at his mates”. Unbelievably, the court was not in a forgiving mood, presumably in the belief that a Chelsea fan who employs such greeting is unlikely to have 13 mates.

Or Joleon Lescott, who tweeted a picture of a Mercedes coupe retailing at a cool £121,690 shortly after his Aston Villa side’s 6-0 home defeat to Liverpool in 2016. It was immediately taken as an “I’m Alright Jack” retort to moaning Villa fans. But Lescott was swift to point out the tweet must have been dispatched accidentally when his phone was in his trousers. Which is surely a familiar experience for many of us in possession of pockets mischievous enough surreptitiously to go through the four-stage process of publishing a tweet.

And who can forget the experience of the Peruvian midfielder Jose Carranza who, in 2003, claimed to have been abducted when he disappeared overnight while his wife was seven months pregnant. His credibility was only marginally compromised when photos of him in the warm embrace of a cheerleader emerged, taken at the time. “He looked as if he enjoyed his kidnapping to me,” the cheerleader told the Peruvian press.

But when it comes to explanations that appear to have been scripted by Alan Partridge, it is in the realm of failed drug tests that real gems are mined. There were the five North Korean women footballers, who, at the 2011 World Cup, tested positive for steroids and whose manager later revealed that they had been simultaneously struck by lightening and treated with a traditional Korean medicine which clearly had disrupted their hormonal balance. Then there was the American sprinter LaShawn Merritt who pointed out that the excess of testosterone in his system was caused by penis enhancement medication called ExtenZe.

But the king of imaginative rationale was Mark Bosnich. Yes, the former Manchester United keeper explained when he was found to have several grammes of cocaine floating through his system, he had taken the drug. But there was a reason for it. He was trying to teach his wife a lesson.

“I told her for every line she took, I would take two,” he said, in what must count as the boldest of drug prevention programmes. Indeed it sounded like quite a party round at the Bosnich residence. Just a shame Max Meyer wasn’t there to take some snaps.