Friday, 4 April 2008
Rain stopped play
Football. It doesn't really matter, does it? Twenty-two men kicking a pig's bladder about a bit of grass, and all that. There's real life, and then there's the football fan stereotype that advertisers use to try and sell us things – the one who paints his house in his club's colours and names his kids after the entire 1972 fourth division championship team.
But while football's profiteers exaggerate its importance, other sports just keep ticking along. And perhaps football could learn a thing or two from one of them – at a time when Sky TV is allowed to invent something called 'Grand Slam Sunday' and run trailers with apocalyptic soundtracks implying that every televised match is roughly on a par with the next global climate change summit in terms of its importance to the future of the human race.
The great thing about cricket is the draw. And particularly, the draw that occurs because it starts raining and the match runs out of time. Four or five entire days of sweat, toil and heroic endeavour can be nullified just because an area of moderate low pressure drifting in from the mid-Atlantic makes it drizzle a bit over certain areas of Hampshire.
This is brilliant because it's exactly like life. We've all been in the position equivalent to the cusp of a crushing innings victory, ready to revel gloriously in our mighty planet-stopping prowess, only to be thwarted by the equivalent of the rain stopping play. Furthermore, it acknowledges that cricket isn't the be-all and end-all. It says "yes, OK – it's only a game, and the course of global civilisation won't be altered as a result".
And before the morons who run the Premier League pulled out their staggeringly unpopular 'Game 39' idea, their counterparts at the Football League came up with a corker of their own. Remember Sir Brian Mawhinney's attempt to 'settle' every drawn match with a penalty shoot-out? Wondering why he's still in a job? Me too.
So let's turn the tables. Every match postponed because of the weather, instead of being rescheduled, should just be deemed a draw. A point is awarded to both teams in the normal way. A point is made that football doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things. And imagine the difference it will make to the problems of springtime fixture congestion!
Most significantly of all, the club most affected would be Rochdale, where Town are headed tomorrow. Spotland is notoriously prone to waterlogging, and awarding a draw for all postponed matches would deprive Dale of around 24 points per season – catapulting the Mariners above them into the play-off places. Not that football matters very much, but promotion might be nice at some point.
But while football's profiteers exaggerate its importance, other sports just keep ticking along. And perhaps football could learn a thing or two from one of them – at a time when Sky TV is allowed to invent something called 'Grand Slam Sunday' and run trailers with apocalyptic soundtracks implying that every televised match is roughly on a par with the next global climate change summit in terms of its importance to the future of the human race.
The great thing about cricket is the draw. And particularly, the draw that occurs because it starts raining and the match runs out of time. Four or five entire days of sweat, toil and heroic endeavour can be nullified just because an area of moderate low pressure drifting in from the mid-Atlantic makes it drizzle a bit over certain areas of Hampshire.
This is brilliant because it's exactly like life. We've all been in the position equivalent to the cusp of a crushing innings victory, ready to revel gloriously in our mighty planet-stopping prowess, only to be thwarted by the equivalent of the rain stopping play. Furthermore, it acknowledges that cricket isn't the be-all and end-all. It says "yes, OK – it's only a game, and the course of global civilisation won't be altered as a result".
And before the morons who run the Premier League pulled out their staggeringly unpopular 'Game 39' idea, their counterparts at the Football League came up with a corker of their own. Remember Sir Brian Mawhinney's attempt to 'settle' every drawn match with a penalty shoot-out? Wondering why he's still in a job? Me too.
So let's turn the tables. Every match postponed because of the weather, instead of being rescheduled, should just be deemed a draw. A point is awarded to both teams in the normal way. A point is made that football doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things. And imagine the difference it will make to the problems of springtime fixture congestion!
Most significantly of all, the club most affected would be Rochdale, where Town are headed tomorrow. Spotland is notoriously prone to waterlogging, and awarding a draw for all postponed matches would deprive Dale of around 24 points per season – catapulting the Mariners above them into the play-off places. Not that football matters very much, but promotion might be nice at some point.
Labels: cricket, draws, game 39, mawhinney, perspective, premiership, rochdale, sky, weather
Friday, 28 March 2008
First one in to Blundell Park, turn on the lights
There are things that all of us Grimbarians and Meggies have in common. We all pronounce our vowels with a grinding rasp that could put a mammoth in a coma. None of us knew had heard of a balti until 2003. And we all love to go and watch our local football team once every ten years or so.
It may be, of course, that you're one of that smattering of social deviants who attend the Mariners' matches more often. You might even belong to that handful of dangerous obsessives who hold something called a 'season ticket'. But with Town having sold 25,000 tickets for Sunday's big match at Wembley, against an average attendance at Blundell Park this season of 4,200, it may be useful for us to compare and contrast the two stadiums.
First, both stadiums have a decent public transport infrastructure. Blundell Park is easily accessible by bus and rail (in marked contrast, it seems, to John Fenty's proposed new ground on the outskirts of Grimsby) and Wembley goes so far as to call itself "a public transport stadium". It may be impossible to get there from Grimsby by train in time for the stupid 1:15 kick-off on Sunday, but that's the fault of Sky, not the railways.
The managers of Wembley maintain a long list of items that spectators are not allowed to bring into the ground. This includes anything that features "corporate or inappropriate branding". Presumably no such rule exists at Blundell Park; otherwise there'd be no admittance to the Pontoon for all those scrawny 12-year-olds wearing Liverpool and Manchester United shirts.
Also on the list of prohibited items at the national stadium are cans, bottles and flasks, whether they are glass or plastic. Ostensibly this is for safety reasons. Realistically, it's so the kiosks inside the ground can charge you £5.50 for a cup of warm Evian.
But they need the money more than you do. Wembley's building costs hugely overshot the estimate, creating a debt of Humber Bridge proportions. Mr Fenty admitted recently that his proposed new ground has a £6m shortfall in its funding – but he also says that the cost of staying at Blundell Park would be the club ceasing to exist.
It makes you wonder why Lincoln, Rochdale, Hereford and indeed all 13 fourth division clubs with lower attendances than us this season aren't planning to build new grounds, because they must all be in even greater danger of ceasing to exist, but there you go.
Or, if you're one of the hordes who'll be at Wembley with black and white flags and face paint but won't walk down the road to see the Town at Blundell Park, there you don't go. See you in 2018, folks!
It may be, of course, that you're one of that smattering of social deviants who attend the Mariners' matches more often. You might even belong to that handful of dangerous obsessives who hold something called a 'season ticket'. But with Town having sold 25,000 tickets for Sunday's big match at Wembley, against an average attendance at Blundell Park this season of 4,200, it may be useful for us to compare and contrast the two stadiums.
First, both stadiums have a decent public transport infrastructure. Blundell Park is easily accessible by bus and rail (in marked contrast, it seems, to John Fenty's proposed new ground on the outskirts of Grimsby) and Wembley goes so far as to call itself "a public transport stadium". It may be impossible to get there from Grimsby by train in time for the stupid 1:15 kick-off on Sunday, but that's the fault of Sky, not the railways.
The managers of Wembley maintain a long list of items that spectators are not allowed to bring into the ground. This includes anything that features "corporate or inappropriate branding". Presumably no such rule exists at Blundell Park; otherwise there'd be no admittance to the Pontoon for all those scrawny 12-year-olds wearing Liverpool and Manchester United shirts.
Also on the list of prohibited items at the national stadium are cans, bottles and flasks, whether they are glass or plastic. Ostensibly this is for safety reasons. Realistically, it's so the kiosks inside the ground can charge you £5.50 for a cup of warm Evian.
But they need the money more than you do. Wembley's building costs hugely overshot the estimate, creating a debt of Humber Bridge proportions. Mr Fenty admitted recently that his proposed new ground has a £6m shortfall in its funding – but he also says that the cost of staying at Blundell Park would be the club ceasing to exist.
It makes you wonder why Lincoln, Rochdale, Hereford and indeed all 13 fourth division clubs with lower attendances than us this season aren't planning to build new grounds, because they must all be in even greater danger of ceasing to exist, but there you go.
Or, if you're one of the hordes who'll be at Wembley with black and white flags and face paint but won't walk down the road to see the Town at Blundell Park, there you don't go. See you in 2018, folks!
Labels: blundell park, debt, fentydome, new stadiums, parochialism, premiership, support, trains, transport, wembley
Friday, 21 March 2008
Nice work if you can get it
"Things like that you just cannot understand. There is nothing you can do. The rules are the rules and the players must go." These are the words of the Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez. He is unhappy that one of his players, Javier Mascherano, has been called up by his national team, Argentina, to play a friendly in Egypt next week.
Whenever footballers travel thousands of miles around the world to play unnecessary extra matches we invariably hear a chorus of bitter howls of protest by managers in the Premier League, whose recent 'Game 39' proposal would mean footballers travelling thousands of miles around the world to play unnecessary extra matches.
And there are already all those lucrative friendlies in the USA, China and the United Arab Emirates. But then the Premier League is full of contradictions. In 1990 England reached the semi-finals of the World Cup. On paper at least, this made them one of the top four teams in the world. Then the Premier League was set up, and they told us it would improve the England team. A decade and a half later, England aren't even one of the top 16 teams in Europe.
The recurring theme among these paradoxes, though, is this notion that footballers shouldn't actually play football very much. Perhaps we need to recognise, however, that in the Premier League football is essentially a distraction from shopping for Aston Martins, getting drunk and crashing them into walls, and doing photoshoots for the 12-page piece in Hello! magazine about your tacky wedding to a temporary pop star with an orange face.
Town have two games this weekend, and by the time they leave the pitch at Wembley next Sunday they will have played eight times in 30 days. Rafael Benítez ought to see how he likes that – and let's not forget that, while Alan Buckley has to choose from a squad of 20, Liverpool currently have ten players out on loan and shirts that go up to 42, 45 and 48. You could choose your lottery numbers from that, be the sole winner on a rollover week, and still have less than the Liverpool squad earns in a week.
It's often overlooked that, beyond Arsenal and Manchester United (and maybe Tottenham when they feel like it), there isn't really that much attractive, skilful football to be seen in the Premier League. It's all about pace, strength and endurance. But if there weren't this obsession with fitness and avoiding 'player burnout', then the top players in England would have to overcome their opponents with passing and ball control instead.
And then maybe, just maybe, the England team really would improve. Although that might take a few less Aston Martins and Hello! weddings as well.
Whenever footballers travel thousands of miles around the world to play unnecessary extra matches we invariably hear a chorus of bitter howls of protest by managers in the Premier League, whose recent 'Game 39' proposal would mean footballers travelling thousands of miles around the world to play unnecessary extra matches.
And there are already all those lucrative friendlies in the USA, China and the United Arab Emirates. But then the Premier League is full of contradictions. In 1990 England reached the semi-finals of the World Cup. On paper at least, this made them one of the top four teams in the world. Then the Premier League was set up, and they told us it would improve the England team. A decade and a half later, England aren't even one of the top 16 teams in Europe.
The recurring theme among these paradoxes, though, is this notion that footballers shouldn't actually play football very much. Perhaps we need to recognise, however, that in the Premier League football is essentially a distraction from shopping for Aston Martins, getting drunk and crashing them into walls, and doing photoshoots for the 12-page piece in Hello! magazine about your tacky wedding to a temporary pop star with an orange face.
Town have two games this weekend, and by the time they leave the pitch at Wembley next Sunday they will have played eight times in 30 days. Rafael Benítez ought to see how he likes that – and let's not forget that, while Alan Buckley has to choose from a squad of 20, Liverpool currently have ten players out on loan and shirts that go up to 42, 45 and 48. You could choose your lottery numbers from that, be the sole winner on a rollover week, and still have less than the Liverpool squad earns in a week.
It's often overlooked that, beyond Arsenal and Manchester United (and maybe Tottenham when they feel like it), there isn't really that much attractive, skilful football to be seen in the Premier League. It's all about pace, strength and endurance. But if there weren't this obsession with fitness and avoiding 'player burnout', then the top players in England would have to overcome their opponents with passing and ball control instead.
And then maybe, just maybe, the England team really would improve. Although that might take a few less Aston Martins and Hello! weddings as well.
Labels: celebrity, england, fixture congestion, friendlies, game 39, liverpool, premiership, workload
Friday, 25 January 2008
Another right-back, another planet
The Mariners, it would be fair to say, have never had much to do with the Premier League. A GTFC director might have phoned them up 15 years ago to ask how big your ground has to be to get in, and the girls on reception laughed and made up a number, which is why the Fentydome is ending up expandable to 20,100 seats, but that's about it.
For a giddy week or two in late 1995, when Ivano Bonetti briefly satisfied our Grimbarian need for an instant solution to decades of neglect and apathy, Town sat in the upper reaches of the second flight and anything looked possible. But anything was possible: by the end of the season we were 16th and the goalkeeper seemed to be chucking the ball in his own net on purpose.
We've rubbed shoulders with plenty of Premier League clubs in the cups. But Town's victory over Spurs in 2005 showed how little they know of us. Tottenham fans' blogs afterwards described their experience at "Blunden Park" as "the result of a lifetime for Grimsby". Which it was, as long as you're younger than 35 and you don't count our cup wins against Everton (1979 and 1984), Newcastle (1982), Middlesbrough (1989), Aston Villa (1991), West Ham (1996), Leicester (1997), Norwich (1998) and Liverpool (2001).
True, the Mariners proudly boast a dozen or so seasons of top-flight history either side of the Second World War – which is a dozen or so more, of course, than any other club in the Lincolnshire and Humber area. Unfortunately this is not recognised in the new official version of football history, which maintains that the game was invented in 1992 by Sky TV.
But those who really know football know that the top division is very far from the be-all and end-all. And if you want to see clearly what the Premier League stands for today, then look no further than the champions Manchester United, who decided that the banner displayed at Old Trafford to commemorate next month's 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster wouldn't be complete without the logo of their corporate sponsor AIG.
If United have built themselves a parallel universe from the one Town inhabit, it's all the more pleasing to see their manager – together with two other Premier League bosses – backing this newspaper's renewed campaign to have John McDermott made an MBE. And as Shrewsbury arrive at Blundell Park tomorrow it's a timely reminder of his final game, back at Gay Meadow last May.
Macca would have been a Premier League player if he hadn't said no to Bradford, Ipswich and Sunderland. But this is exactly why he deserves the award. There are hundreds of Premier League players – and there's only one John McDermott.
For a giddy week or two in late 1995, when Ivano Bonetti briefly satisfied our Grimbarian need for an instant solution to decades of neglect and apathy, Town sat in the upper reaches of the second flight and anything looked possible. But anything was possible: by the end of the season we were 16th and the goalkeeper seemed to be chucking the ball in his own net on purpose.
We've rubbed shoulders with plenty of Premier League clubs in the cups. But Town's victory over Spurs in 2005 showed how little they know of us. Tottenham fans' blogs afterwards described their experience at "Blunden Park" as "the result of a lifetime for Grimsby". Which it was, as long as you're younger than 35 and you don't count our cup wins against Everton (1979 and 1984), Newcastle (1982), Middlesbrough (1989), Aston Villa (1991), West Ham (1996), Leicester (1997), Norwich (1998) and Liverpool (2001).
True, the Mariners proudly boast a dozen or so seasons of top-flight history either side of the Second World War – which is a dozen or so more, of course, than any other club in the Lincolnshire and Humber area. Unfortunately this is not recognised in the new official version of football history, which maintains that the game was invented in 1992 by Sky TV.
But those who really know football know that the top division is very far from the be-all and end-all. And if you want to see clearly what the Premier League stands for today, then look no further than the champions Manchester United, who decided that the banner displayed at Old Trafford to commemorate next month's 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster wouldn't be complete without the logo of their corporate sponsor AIG.
If United have built themselves a parallel universe from the one Town inhabit, it's all the more pleasing to see their manager – together with two other Premier League bosses – backing this newspaper's renewed campaign to have John McDermott made an MBE. And as Shrewsbury arrive at Blundell Park tomorrow it's a timely reminder of his final game, back at Gay Meadow last May.
Macca would have been a Premier League player if he hadn't said no to Bradford, Ipswich and Sunderland. But this is exactly why he deserves the award. There are hundreds of Premier League players – and there's only one John McDermott.
Labels: bonetti, fentydome, ferguson, manchester united, mcdermott, premiership, shrewsbury, sky, sponsorship, tottenham
Friday, 7 December 2007
Club 0 country 0
So here we are in the pit of despair. Languishing in the depths, with little cause for hope. Arriving at the lowest and bleakest point in an inevitable sequence of long-term decline set in motion by a critical succession of poor executive decisions and sustained by a culture of churlish support and inflated expectations. But enough about the England team – what are Town's chances of turning the season around?
Watching England began for me as a light relief from the hard slog of supporting Grimsby. After travelling for hours and spending a fortune to watch the Mariners lose 4-0 at Watford or Birmingham, and then feeling miserable as hell for the next week, it was a low-risk emotional investment to watch England on the telly. It was a chance to back a team that might actually win something, and if they didn't, well, it wouldn't hurt like when Town get relegated.
But then I realised why Town would never be as competitive a side again as they were under George Kerr and Dave Booth, when I first started going. TV and attendance money was shared out much more evenly between clubs, and in 1984 we finished fifth in what is now called the Championship. This can never be repeated because the rich clubs decided to keep all the cash by forming the Premiership.
And then, when you're watching England, you're supposed to support players from the Premiership – the very organisation that took the bread from Town's mouth.
Paradoxically, it's also less attractive to watch the national team because it's no longer very different from watching Grimsby. Only a fool would still describe England as "a team that might actually win something". After Israel beat Russia, for example, and England briefly had a chance again to qualify for Euro 2008, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard immediately talked up their chances of winning the tournament.
There were also shades of England in Russell Slade's Mariners team. Specifically, in that season we were awarded about 80 penalties and from only one of them the ball didn't end up in the North Sea.
Most pertinent of all is the issue of management. Managers of both England and Grimsby have to try and motivate players who would sooner be elsewhere – at England, back with their Premiership sides; at Grimsby, with clubs that have nice warm changing rooms and fans who don't jeer every misplaced pass.
And for both teams, of course, the big risk involved in changing managers is that none of the candidates whose names are the first to be mentioned have any interest at all in taking on an impossible job. Martin O'Neill is staying at Villa, Arsene Wenger won't leave Arsenal, and Nigel Clough is having another fine season at Burton Albion.
Watching England began for me as a light relief from the hard slog of supporting Grimsby. After travelling for hours and spending a fortune to watch the Mariners lose 4-0 at Watford or Birmingham, and then feeling miserable as hell for the next week, it was a low-risk emotional investment to watch England on the telly. It was a chance to back a team that might actually win something, and if they didn't, well, it wouldn't hurt like when Town get relegated.
But then I realised why Town would never be as competitive a side again as they were under George Kerr and Dave Booth, when I first started going. TV and attendance money was shared out much more evenly between clubs, and in 1984 we finished fifth in what is now called the Championship. This can never be repeated because the rich clubs decided to keep all the cash by forming the Premiership.
And then, when you're watching England, you're supposed to support players from the Premiership – the very organisation that took the bread from Town's mouth.
Paradoxically, it's also less attractive to watch the national team because it's no longer very different from watching Grimsby. Only a fool would still describe England as "a team that might actually win something". After Israel beat Russia, for example, and England briefly had a chance again to qualify for Euro 2008, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard immediately talked up their chances of winning the tournament.
There were also shades of England in Russell Slade's Mariners team. Specifically, in that season we were awarded about 80 penalties and from only one of them the ball didn't end up in the North Sea.
Most pertinent of all is the issue of management. Managers of both England and Grimsby have to try and motivate players who would sooner be elsewhere – at England, back with their Premiership sides; at Grimsby, with clubs that have nice warm changing rooms and fans who don't jeer every misplaced pass.
And for both teams, of course, the big risk involved in changing managers is that none of the candidates whose names are the first to be mentioned have any interest at all in taking on an impossible job. Martin O'Neill is staying at Villa, Arsene Wenger won't leave Arsenal, and Nigel Clough is having another fine season at Burton Albion.
Labels: booth, clough, england, failure, gerrard, kerr, lampard, managers, o'neill, premiership, slade, wenger
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