June 2008 Archives

There is no doubt technology has advanced our lives. The very fact that I am sat here, bashing my thoughts into a laptop which will soon upload my musings to a live webpage is testament to that fact.
A few years ago there simply wasn't any such thing as an on-line Blog and a few years before that if someone had mentioned the word laptop you would have thought it was something you used to eat your dinner off in front of the TV.
However, there is one aspect of my life that hasn't been enhanced by technology and that is my love of sport, in its purest form. My tolerance for technological invention in the sporting arena stops at the development of 24-hour day satellite sports channels. In every other way, technological enhancement has diminished my love of watching sport.
Take football, the game I grew up loving and am now lucky enough to watch for a living. How has technology enhanced the game? I can't think of one thing.
Perhaps it is that devotion to nostalgia that I used to bemoan in my own father but now equally embrace, but wasn't football coverage better a decade ago?

You'll recall my assertion three weeks ago that this was the blog that refused to let itself get distracted by Euro 2008?
I didn't believe anyone would come here to read my views on the football while the web is littered with blogs, some funny and some less so, detailing the fans' view of things. Yet finally, with one match to go, I'm going to break my rule - because I can suddenly declare a personal interest.

One of the reasons I love working for one of the handful of broadsheet newspapers remaining in this country is the scope it gives us to display high-quality pictures properly.
Of course, our hard-working band of reporters (a very tight four-piece, not an orchestra) will tell you that it's their words which sell the paper or attract people to the Post's website, but a good picture can really pull the reader into a page - and once pulled in, they are more likely to keep reading.

There have been some pretty harsh things written about the England players and management during the tour to New Zealand, described in various national newspapers as disastrous, calamitous and disgraceful - in some cases all three.
I will leave the off-field shenanigans to those who know more about the circumstances of the alleged incident. My only comment is that it will be sad if through a combination of the cult of celebrity and their own inability to deal with the attendant fame, rugby players go the same way as footballers and become front page fodder.
On the field England were beaten twice - and soundly. The concession of nine tries and very little idea about how to attack the All Blacks is a pretty damning indictment of the current coaching regime.

Having managed to work Bob Dylan into a cricket piece here a couple of weeks ago, let's maintain the sport and music motif, shall we? And let's talk about rugby grounds.
I spent last weekend in Wales and the West Country, watching the peerless Bruce Springsteen in Cardiff on Saturday night (quite wonderful, thank you; an uninterrupted three-hour set and a five-track encore comprising Jungleland, Thunder Road, Born to Run, Rosalita and American Land more than made up for the great man arriving on stage 45 minutes late).
The concert was held at the Millennium Stadium, somewhere I've only previously seen from outside but which is a remarkable piece of work.

It's been rather quiet at Birmingham City for the last week or so, other than some fairly standard "closed season" press releases, but it's been apparent from some of Alex McLeish's comments that he would have to sell in order to buy.

The two names most mentioned in the press have been Kapo and Muamba and it was not surprising that Wigan have been linked with both of them. However, Gary Megson stepped up first with an offer for Fabrice Muamba and he has now left for life in the Premier League.

If I ever possessed the desire, or indeed the intellect, to become a lawyer I would base my specialism on the old Barber's Maxim that suggests no matter what happens to the economy people will still need their hair cutting.

The same principle applies to rugby union and litigation. As long as there's an oval ball and H-shaped posts they'll be some club or player that needs a brief. My children would never go hungry.

And so it proves again this year. While the climax to the National One season came several weeks ago the standings have still not been finalised. The players have packed up their kitbags and gone on holiday but the suits are fighting with the vigour one would expect from a relegation threatened team defending its goal-line.

Two West Midlands clubs are at the heart of the action. The fates of Pertemps Bees and Coventry hang in the balance. The blood, sweat and tears shed over the course of eight months and 30 games is rendered insignificant when compared to the cases argued by the club's hired legal guns.

Welcome to the blog that is determined not to get distracted by Euro 2008. Not that I'm disinterested, like my colleague Lisa Smith (as I write, Holland v Italy is sparkling away on the office television and we've already had one eye on the bore that was France v Romania - and anyway, Lisa's fallen victim to the 'if it's not the greatest league in the world, it's irrelevant' school) but because I don't think you've come here to read what I think about it.

A national survey has revealed that up to 2.5 million Brits are cheering on the Italians in the European 2008 Championships because of the glaring absence of a team from the Home Nations in the competition.
That means that 30 per cent of English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish fans have had to pack away their national flags and replica shirts in favour of donning the colours of an alternative or an adopted team for the summer.
Personally I am 100 per cent sure those statistics are wrong. Certainly the true supporters of the beautiful game will tell you that football fans, like the proverbial leopard, never change their spots.
I mean if you asked any Scotsman who he was supporting at the last World Cup you can guarantee he would say: "Whoever England are playing." Fans just don't switch allegiance to another team or nation either if they share borders - fact.

Amongst the various bits and pieces of mail that plopped on to my doormat yesterday was a missive from Birmingham City extolling the virtues of renewing my season ticket.

Currently, it's on my dining room table and I am thinking about it. So, it would seem, are a lot of other fans as the renewal rate is the lowest it has been for years.

Clearly, the club have to do something about this if they are to maintain a reasonable fan base for next season.