Why the beautiful game is still beautiful

Almost 30 years after I saw my first live match, I probably ought to have got over my love of football. It just hasn’t happened though. All through my life the "beautiful game" has been there, in the foreground as much as the background. I vividly remember the excitement of Friday afternoon shopping at the Co-op because it meant more cut-out cards for the 1982 World Cup album, and shortly after that Panini stickers entered my life. Then I became an avid reader of Shoot! magazine. When I wasn’t fortunate enough to go to a match, Saturday afternoon was about “guess the goals” competitions and score updates on local radio.


Pre-puberty I didn’t have an imaginary friend, I had an entire imaginary football league complete with hand-drawn squad posters, a carefully-typed magazine whose pictures were traced from real-life action shots; and an Amstrad Basic computer program for calculating results. I dripped on my exercise books after sweaty kickarounds in the junior-school playground. I also played occasionally and haplessly in goal for school teams until the move to 8’ goalposts added a decisive lack of height to my long list of weaknesses. As a teenager I spent hours on coaches visiting a few thousand grass-and-concrete square yards of England’s less impressive provincial towns and accumulated books full of notes, lineups and match reports from games I saw live or on TV. I collected probably hundreds of matchday programmes and eventually (briefly) had a job producing one. Many mementos have been discarded over the years but a pictorial record of the Mexico World Cup remains one of my favourite books, alongside a history of Gillingham FC which is worth more than ten times what I paid for it.


I still find myself distracted by under-10s matches when I’m supposed to be supervising my sons in the park and if there’s a game on TV I’ll watch it, even Spurs’ C team in the Europa League. It’s crazy. Everyone knows that football is rotten pretty much from top to bottom. This isn’t new, just more prominent than before. FIFA executives have been taking backhanders (allegedly) for decades. In the '80s stadia were decrepit, full of thugs in and out of police uniform. Now they are more family-friendly, if families aren’t priced out. Cynical fouls, fixed matches, robotic referees, trigger-happy chairmen and ranting autocratic owners were ever thus; even the oligarchic Premier League and its TV-controlled scheduling is now old hat. On top of that we have inarticulate, respectless, mercenary millionaires shagging and swearing their way from the back to the front pages. And raving, win-at-any-cost parents standing on the Sunday-morning touchlines aspiring for their sons to follow in their tabloided footsteps – the millionaire part at least. And inane barracking from the stands. (Mercifully racism has been banished but wit also seems to have gone; I hope that’s a coincidence.) But every now and again something happens in football to warm the soul – and I’m not thinking only about Gillingham’s three victories in seven-goal thrillers this season.


Two weeks ago the Doncaster Rovers striker Billy Sharp lost his two-day-old son Louis. After missing one game, he wanted to play against Middlesbrough, was made captain and scored early in the game with a brilliant volley. At that point he revealed a T-shirt tribute to his son. Normally that would have brought him a booking but the referee overlooked it. Either he was human or, more likely, with tears in his eyes he couldn’t find his pencil. Last Saturday Sharp played away at Ipswich, who twice tried to sign him in the summer. He scored again to give Doncaster a 2-0 lead and wreck the home fans’ hopes of winning a crucial game. Yet those same fans’ response was not abuse, but an immediate standing ovation for Sharp as he celebrated the goal. And that moment when thousands engage spontaneously in appreciation of something more important than the result, is why I still love football.

Dale Farm - a question of semantics

Sky News ran a poll today:

Should the Dale Farm travellers be forcefully evicted?

The results were perhaps unsurprising: 92% Yes, 8% No.

What I found more interesting was the wording of the question. Most coverage of this story has talked about "forcible" evictions. According to an online dictionary, forcible means "done or effected by force: forcible entry into a house" while forceful means "full of force; powerful; vigorous; effective". To me, forceful implies a degree of force beyond that which is strictly necessary to achieve the goal. I wonder whether Sky's choice of word was accidental or deliberate - and whether the 92% of respondents were actually enthused by the idea of police and bailiffs going just a bit too far.

Of course, the more obvious semantic question about the whole story is why these people label themselves travellers but want to stay put. Unfortunately I'm about the two millionth person to pose the question and no one has yet managed to answer it.

Booze, part 2

Speaking as the person who usually sticks with soft drinks at parties, I was interested to see this article on the BBC website yesterday. An eminent anthropologist suggests that many of the behaviours associated with alcohol are nothing to do with the physical effects but the result of personal or social expectations around drinking.

This comes as no surprise to me. I've long believed that in many cases inebriation is more psychological than physical. Of course balance, reaction times and the like are impaired; you won't catch me arguing that it's safe to drive or perform open-heart surgery when under the influence of alcohol. But there's nothing in a bottle to make someone become verbally or physically aggressive, jump into bed with a stranger, or do any of the other things that tend to be explained away with "I'd had a few drinks". I'm convinced that what really happens is the drinker sees an opportunity to act outside established social norms without having to take full responsibility, because society has allowed alcohol to be an acceptable scapegoat.

I know a person who when drinking becomes argumentative, opinionated, generally obnoxious. From the very first sip. This behaviour wouldn't be considered acceptable in many other countries where drinking is just as deeply ingrained. In Spain and Italy for example, many people drink a large amount over the course of a week but it isn't seen as extraordinary and doesn't lead to extremes of behaviour. Try convincing a magistrate there that it wasn't your fault, it was the drink. I suspect you wouldn't get far.

Alcohol is a depressant yet we're told some people become dependent, which seems a strange state of affairs. I can understand addiction to a stimulant, but how often do you hear someone say "I had to take more and more to get the same low"? I suspect that alcohol addiction is more about freedom from social norms than anything physical. And maybe there are others out there like me, who can enjoy the taste of a drink without turning into lager louts.

So, back to the subject of alcohol on the coach. Perhaps these secret G&T drinkers aren't bound to misbehave and it's all a storm in an Irish coffee cup.

Booze, part 1

Earlier this week I received an email from my coach company:

It has been reported ... that alcohol is being consumed on a number of the commuters coaches on both the morning and evening journeys.

And that's just the drivers. Boom-tish.

The email warned that anyone found drinking may be thrown out at the next stop. But what caught my eye was the word morning. Although it's not my cup of tea, I can understand a tinny to unwind on the way home from work - and on what I call the party coach there's certainly a pub-like atmosphere at times, with or without booze. But really, if you need a drink before you even get to work, it's time to look for another job, or some help.

Autumn Days

It was my sons' harvest festival last Friday and one of the hymns was called Autumn Days, by one Estelle White. With apologies to whoever holds the copyright, here are the lyrics.

Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled
And the silk inside a chestnut shell
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled
All these things I love so well

So I mustn’t forget
No, I mustn’t forget
To say a great big thank you
I mustn’t forget

Clouds that look like familiar faces
And a winter’s moon with frosted rings
Smell of bacon as I fasten up my laces
And the song the milkman sings

Whipped-up spray that is rainbow-scattered
And a swallow curving in the sky
Shoes so comfy though they’re worn out and they’re battered
And the taste of apple pie

Scent of gardens when the rain’s been falling
And a minnow darting down a stream
Picked-up engine that’s been stuttering and stalling
And a win for my home team

According to a post on another blog, Estelle White died earlier this year, aged 85. A former nun and a versatile musician, she apparently wrote more than 160 hymns. I must admit though to surprise that this one is so popular at harvest festivals. Evidently I'm not the first to take issue with it either.

I should point out that my sons' school is CoE and lays on the Anglicanism fairly thick at times. Autumn Days seems at odds with this. My own church upbringing leaves me reluctant to term it a hymn. Usually there would be some kind of reference to God or a theological point. The closest this one comes is in the chorus: "I mustn't forget to say a great big thank you" - which begs the question, to whom? The things themselves? The universe? It sounds as though the children are embracing pantheism. Ms White herself apparently believed in starting from something concrete rather than abstract; it’s a common approach among modern songwriters but hymnists normally include some kind of religious reference along the way.

Of course, the basic theme of the song is to be grateful, to something or other. And this, it appears, is why the choristers in the article disliked it: they didn't believe they should be expressing gratitude for aircraft.

I have a more fundamental objection anyway: semantics. I don't believe many jet planes met in the air to be refuelled, even in the 60s when Ms White claimed it was a marvel, and I've never seen a cloud that resembled a familiar face (other than possibly in Disney's version of Pooh and the Heffalump). Would I really be putting my shoes on before the breakfast is even cooked? And milkmen were supposed to whistle, not sing, even assuming you could hear them above the whine of the electric float. Most of all I dislike the last line. "Home" team is the team playing in its own stadium. "My" team implies favouritism. The two concepts are unrelated: "my home team" makes no sense at all. And nor do I think it's healthy to thank a deity for a sports victory: it poses awkward questions in defeat. Perhaps Ms White had no clue about sport. But then she was a Geordie, where football is a religion, and presumably she spent a good part of her life wearing black and white...

The best compliment I can pay this song is that it meant there was no room on the school's playlist for "When the knight won his spurs". Who aren't my home team, incidentally.

Choosing words carefully

Two news stories yesterday caught my eye, for quotes that could have come straight from the mouth of Alistair Campbell or Max Clifford.

Part 1

"By finding this shipwreck and telling the story of its loss, we pay tribute to the brave merchant sailors who lost their lives." So said marine archaeologist Neil Dobson on the discovery of the wreck of the SS Gairsoppa, sunk by a U-boat in 1941 with the loss of 84 lives. Bravo Mr Dobson. How ever can we thank him and his colleagues from Odyssey Marine? Oh, I don't know, but an 80% share of the estimated £150m of silver on board should do it.

Part 2

"We want to stay for another 30 years. We want to do what is legal and right." So said Dale Farm resident Kathleen McCarthy. "Legal" and "right" - two words not usually associated with travellers' activities. Putting 51 caravans on a former scrapyard without planning permission is certainly not "legal". I'm surprised the Dale Farm crowd are putting up such a fuss about being moved on. Apart from the fact it seems strange to define yourself as travellers but stay put, hasn't Basildon run out of drives to tarmac by now?

Life's Instructions: A List

My life hasn't been going great recently. That puts me in a large proportion of the population who at any given time aren't overenamoured with their existence. At such times it's good to read something simple and uplifting, like this which was linked on a blog at work. I wish I could give due credit to the author but as David Booker (the Centred Librarian) doesn't explain its provenance, the best I can do is pass it on. There are many things I could say about items on the list: how I find them poignant, or challenging, or adorable; but instead I will limit myself to a simple comment.

If I can adopt a few more of these in my daily life, it will not only seem better to me but will be better for those around me.

Selling change in the City

My journey to work usually takes me through the City of London and I never cease to be surprised how much construction work is going on there. I've written previously about the demolition of a pleasant building to make way for the Shard, which is as immensely disappointing as it is immense. Across the river the pace of change seems to be unrelenting.

Construction has started on the Cheese Grater and (after a long hiatus) the Walkie-Talkie, or 122 Leadenhall Street and 20 Fenchurch Street as they are formally known. Slightly further along the bus route, 110 Cannon Street is now shrouded and being stripped back to a skeleton in preparation for a refit. The hoardings hint at an aspirational approach to selling space in the renovated building: it has words such as bright, individual, refined and stylish arrayed in a chirpy font as though the product being sold were a symphony or a biography, not one of a cluster of mid-height office blocks sandwiched between two of the City's main thoroughfares.

A hundred yards further along Cannon Street is perhaps the most remarkable sight in the City at the moment: a vast empty plot which used to be the 1950s-built Bucklersbury House. All that's left of the unmourned behemoth (and a pleasant Art Deco building on the corner) is a two-storey outcrop being used as a site office while the cranes, bulldozers and concrete-crunchers do their thing. Somewhere in there is also the remains of the ancient Temple of Mithras, which was harshly treated in the post-war rush to development but will now apparently be given a more honoured place when a new building rises from the dust. The landowners Legal & General have struggled to find a suitable scheme for what is a large, unusually shaped and prominent location; and it still isn't clear exactly what they intend to build or when.

Is another office building really needed? Directly across the road is the imaginatively named Walbrook, a low-rise development with glass and steel bulges but precisely zero tenants a full year after its completion. Another elaborate reconstruction of a new block behind an old facade just 100 yards away in Queen Street also appears to be still largely empty after probably three years. Cannon Street station itself has been a building site for years, thanks to the replacement of an unloved 40-year-old office block above the platforms with a building that has elaborate steel cross-braces but is probably only 40 years away from being an unloved 40-year-old office block. It's impressive at street level and the concourse is immeasurably improved, but will the building have any tenants?

The trouble is, of course, that developers start projects during times of boom, when borrowing is easy and firms take on new staff and seek opportunities to upgrade to more imposing and sparklier headquarters. By the time the planning process and construction are finished the economic cycle has reached the bust phase, companies are reducing their headcount and austerity takes precedence over making a statement. Result: empty edifices.

Shouldn't we be worried? These are the companies that collectively manage most of our money. But they can't even plan major construction projects to deliver at the time they're needed. My conclusion is that this betrays an unspoken truth about our modern economy: its foundation is not delivering what people need, but convincing them that change is better than the status quo and the new is best.

The price of privacy

Well well well, CTB the superinjuncted footballer is Ryan Giggs. Who knew?! Only most parliamentarians and about 75,000 people on Twitter, which as one of the newspapers is bound to have mentioned, is about the same as an average crowd at Old Trafford. I found out from the Mail on Sunday. At this point I should make plain that I will never buy this rag while it employs Piers Morgan, any more than I would buy The Sun since its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster. But in the airport lounge a couple of Sundays ago I happened to read a bizarre interview with moderately-famous actor Hugh Bonneville in the Independent and, only a few minutes later, the MoS article linked above.

The purpose of the story is absolutely clear in the context of the recent rash of superinjunctions, one of them taken out by an actor to cover an alleged affair with "Wayne Rooney's prostitute" Helen Wood. But the phrase that caught my attention was in the last paragraph: "Hugh’s devotion to wife Lulu is so strong it is understood he is known to fellow thespians as the Ryan Giggs of the showbusiness world, after the famously family-orientated footballer." Journalistic genius. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

The thing is, "famous footballer plays away with Big Brother contestant" definitely falls into the category of dog bites man. "Famous footballer turns down meaningless sex offered by Big Brother contestant" would be man bites dog. David Beckham seems to have suffered no long-term damage despite allegations of an affair - and he plays the family man card far more often than Ryan Giggs, who for all I knew could have been free and single like the rampant heterosexual Ashley Cole.

Don't get me wrong, I don't condone what Giggs (allegedly) did. I'm old-fashioned enough to think that wedding vows mean something and being faithful is a choice. But equally I'm not sure whether it's anyone else's business what the Premiership's longest-serving player got up to with a pneumatic Welshwoman of questionable repute. Leave him in peace to sort it out with his wife. Nor does it matter to me if Mr Bonneville paid to be violated with an object. There's no "public interest" defence here that I can see, if interest is taken to mean "benefit" rather than "curiosity". The right to privacy ought to be prioritised yet appears to have vanished in the Hello! celebrity culture. But Giggs's attempts to pursue tweeters for naming him is ludicrous. Social networking sites and the new media are clearly well ahead of both the mainstream media for disseminating information whether true or false and of the law in judging what is reasonable. Writs are a blunt instrument in a war against instantaneous and universal transmission of thought. The lawyers are probably laughing now, until the celebrities realise they're wasting their time. The PR people however will continue to rake it in trying to repair the damage. It would be an interesting development if Imogen Thomas sued him for slander over his allegation that she was trying to blackmail him.

According to an article I read recently there are several dozen superinjunctions out there, held by various Premiership footballers, actors and other celebrities. Walls have ears even when they're part of a courtroom and sooner or later the names will leak out. Now, if you'll excuse me, although these stories don't interest me I must go and look up Ewan McGregor + superinjunction on Google...