Perhaps, even as we don't directly speak, Public Health Wales is edging towards the truth. It has already been "made aware of a potential infectious disease incident" at the establishment.

This "potential disease incident" - let's call it PDI for ease of reference - caused the last minute cancellation of a group booking by Struggling Southampton FC before Tuesday's (May 8) crucial Premier League match against Fellow Strugglers Swansea. To give them their full current media names.

History records that Struggling Southampton are likely to revert to plain Southampton very soon, if they haven't already. Their 1-0 win at the Liberty Stadium means they have effectively avoided the last available relegation spot - currently filled by Swansea - alongside the already doomed Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion.

At least these last two venerable clubs have now been released from Struggling...

The Marriott, meanwhile, has defended its decision to cancel Southampton's rooms

"We were made aware late last week of a small number of associates and guests becoming ill," said Michael Downie, general manager of the 121-room hotel on Swansea waterfront.

"As per our normal procedures, we notified large group bookings in order for them to find alternative accommodations, should they choose to do so."

Downie added: "There have been no further reports of illness this week and the hotel therefore remains operational."

The view from the Southampton end was a little more ambiguous.

In the wake of his side's crucial victory, Southampton’s manager Mark Hughes suggested that "dark arts" may have been at play in the PDI-related late cancellation which obliged his squad to book into another hotel 40 miles away on the outskirts of Cardiff.

"We suspected that maybe some of the dark arts were at work but we didn't let it affect us," Hughes told BBC Sport.

"I'm not for one minute suggesting Swansea had anything to do with that.

"Maybe it was over-zealous Swansea fans in positions to affect our hotel booking."

Hughes went on to insist that his players had actually benefited from the PDI-related late-switch scenario. Let's call it PDILSS for ease of reference.

"It helped our focus," he said. "We used it as a motivating factor."

The club's supporters group WeMarchOn were unable to resist putting a subtly barbed review of the Marriott on TripAdvisor, referring to the late cancellation of "an extremely important business trip, due to an apparent virus outbreak". It concluded: "Business meeting was extremely productive. Not planning to return any time soon."

Just some feedback... #saintsfc pic.twitter.com/RbG6k2Uh8O

— Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) May 9, 2018

Whether there was any mischief involved or not, to describe what happened as "dark arts" is surely pushing it.

Certainly the PDILSS looks very much like dark arts-lite at worst when compared to the infamous hotel-related treatment of England's footballers during the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico. It remains a classic of its kind, although kind is the very last word to be using.

The background to the aggro England encountered related to the 1966 World Cup finals, where Latin American ire was generated by the fact that the home team did not have to leave their home base of Wembley Stadium throughout the tournament, and strong feelings that referees were looking in a more kindly way towards European sides.

The dismissal of Argentina's captain Antonio Rattin for "violence of the tongue" in the acrimonious quarter-final against England was widely resented, as were the angry comments by England's manager Alf Ramsey in the aftermath of the home side's 1-0 win.

"We have still to produce our best, and this is not possible until we meet the right sort of opponents, and that is a team that comes out to play football and not act as animals," he said.

Ramsey's habitual curtness with the media, and particularly the foreign media, had done nothing to help the situation during England's tour of South America the year before the Finals. And so when the defending champions turned up to their hotel for the group matches in Guadalajara, they were sitting targets.

Their captain, Bobby Moore, had only recently been returned to their company after detention by the police over mysterious charges of having stolen a bracelet from a hotel jewellery store in Bogota, where England played a warm-up game against Colombia. Now there were some hotel-related dark arts worthy of the name…

On the night before England's key match against Brazil, Mexican fans kept up a night-long cacophony of singing, car-horn honking and dustbin-lid banging - let's call it SCHHDLB for ease of reference.

At 4am, in an effort to deaden the noise levels, some willing supporters were put into England tracksuits and driven out of the hotel gates. It didn't work.

History records that England lost the match which followed the SCHHDLB scenario. But they still qualified for a quarter-final against West Germany in Leon, and in the intervening period Ramsey acceded to requests from his men to visit the nearby Guadalajara Country Club, which boasted a golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools - and a swanky bar.

England had brought much of their own food and drink to Mexico, and their players were painstakingly monitored. But at the Country Club a round of beers was ordered and consumed. Whatever was in the bottle handed to the side's prized goalkeeper Gordon Banks, who had produced a save against Pelé in the group match that is still revered as one of the greatest ever seen, it didn't agree with him.

"I can't remember if the bottle I was served was opened in my presence or not," he wrote in Banksy, his autobiography. "But I do know that half-an-hour after that beer I felt very ill indeed."

Meanwhile, England were told they couldn't fly to Leon as the runway there was too small to accommodate them (even though it had been large enough for the German team to land there).

That meant a five-hour journey on the eve of the match in a coach without air-conditioning.

England's destination was the Motel Estancia, which the now departed Bulgarians had complained about during the group stages.

England had requested an alternative, and Peru had just vacated the preferable Guanajuato Hotel. But they were told it was too late to change their plans.

Happily, as with Southampton's PDILSS, England were able to rise above the logistical nightmares and questionable, if not sinister, attentions to their keeper and defeat West Germany before going on to make a successful defence of their trophy by defeating Brazil in the final.

We Englanders wish.

Proper dark arts, them…