Jet Stream
The test series between the
Windies and England was a poorly attended damp squib, the one-day series more
so. Racing has never seen so many fixtures abandoned in the main turf season.
The British Grand Prix was played out in front of empty seats because
petrolheads couldn’t get to flooded car parks. The build-up to Thursday Open at
Lytham St Anne’s has dominated by observations on wind and climatic conditions.
Andy Murray briefly lifted our spirits under a Centre Court roof that was pulled
back and forth with the regularity of the shelf on a penny falls machine.
However, the tarnishing
qualities of excessive rainfall are only partly responsible for the unsettled mood
hanging over sport just now.
This week’s disturbing revelations
in a Westminster Magistrates Court show the extent of the dark place in which football
resides. Rarely has the meaning and nuance of such vitriolic abuse been
analysed as microscopically as it was in the John Terry racism case. The
shoddy, degrading, offensive nature of football has been exposed in the full
glare of publicity. Simon Hattenstone’s article paints a depressing picture of long-standing
ignorance, ineptitude and intransigence about recognising and dealing with
corrosive racism.
The mood I’m in right now,
it would take plenty of evidence to convince me that the game isn’t rotten to
its very core at every level. Racism and general offensiveness are not the only
problems. Add in a fanbase with a bent towards regular violence (most recently
played out in the grandstand of Newbury racecourse on Saturday); allegations of
bungs, corruption and bribery at the very top of the world governing body
(awarding the 2018 World Cup to Qatar makes my nostrils itch with the smell of burning
money) which cascades through tiers of the domestic game; right through to
aggression, interference and intimidation on the part of fathers at their sons’
Sunday morning football and a picture emerges of a game in crisis. We lurch
towards another over-hyped Premier League season with the prospect of players
diving, cheating and pressurising officials; managers coaching them to do so;
ignorant tribal fans sending death threats (and in some cases letter bombs)
willy nilly to players, managers, board members or officials; owners running
down and over-committing clubs for personal profit or ego-mania; and the media
telling us this is the greatest game in the world.
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| Glebe Park |
‘Miserable bastard’, you scowl.
Maybe. Though I have found some bright spots. I was cheered to see Scottish
football club owners refusing to be intimidating by the SPL’s threats of financial
ruin and instead banishing newco Rangers to Scottish League 3. Quite right. The
management and resource atrocities committed at the former club should not be
swept away so easily. Take your medicine and enjoy the view from the corporate
box at Glebe Park. Brechin City will be a welcoming host. And a few capacity
crowds at the lower league clubs wouldn’t be the worst thing for the
sustainability of Scottish football.
Accentuating the positive, I
loved watching Spain’s authoritative defence of the European Championships,
sweeping away slights about a boring passing game with a gorgeous demolition of
a pretty useful Italy outfit.
For all my bellyaching about
football, I do want to reserve a modicum of unvented spleen for the Olympics,
too. I accept that Jacques Rogge has done a lot to clean up the IOC since the monumental
Salt Lake City bribery scandal, but so much controversy lingers on – witness
the 27 Olympic officials and
agents who were caught selling tickets for London 2012 on the black market last
month.
The rampant commercialism and
image protection around the modern
Games sticks in my craw: this “heavily branded corporate monster, devouring a
city in which it is staged before moving on to the next” (Owen Gibson). Stories
about police having to empty their crisps into unmarked plastic bags and a
children’s guard-of-honour being requested to wear adidas trainers are designed
to wind me up in the same way that the reports of EU technocrats demanding
straight bananas and the renaming of Cornish pasties are aimed directly at the
bile of Little Englanders. And I rise to it every time. Probably because I
loath being manipulated by corporate sponsorship more than I loath being
manipulated by the press. But I accept that some of this is necessary to
deliver an event that will not bankrupt the Country. I just wish we could have
lower ticket prices, more contracts for local companies and less kow-towing to
big business. And less of the brand police tormenting independent bakers, for
God’s sake!
I remain,
though, a fan of the Olympics. As a family we have tickets for swimming finals,
football semi-finals and handball group matches. I’m really looking forward to
them. I can’t wait to be part of it. I will become immersed in the action,
developing an instant expertise in the tactics of BMX racing, modern pentathlon
and taekwondo that will allow me to scream advice and encouragement to any
British competitors with an outside chance of making the rostrum. I’ll pay
hawk-like attention to the medals table as if it is a 6f sprint (as long as we
beat the Germans, eh?), and I’ll be bottom-lip-quivery when Mark Cavendish
flies down The Mall on Sunday 28th to bag Britain’s first gold. (Surely
it has to be?)
And what of horse racing in
this sodden Summer? We’ve seen the emergence of a top quality three year old in
Camelot and the confirmation of two great champions in Frankel and Black
Caviar. On the down-side there has been the carnage of water-logged courses and
too many good races run on bad ground. But the tarnishing quality of
controversy has been seen here too. At Worcester last week, a number of high
profile jumps trainers caused the walk-over of a race by withdrawing their
horses in a concerted action to protest at the low levels of prize money on
offer. I happen to think that the bookies and the courses have it too much
their own way and prize money in this country is woeful in comparison with,
frankly, anywhere else. But this is not such a simple debate. The Guardian’s
racing journo Greg Wood lit a fire under the protest by calling into question
the motivations of these trainers, arguing that they were the “already minted
demanding more”. The full arguments are here and are worth reading.
So as I look forward to the
Olympics, to The Open, to England taking on the South Africans for top test
team status and to a second half of an increasingly intriguing flat season, I
note that the jet stream is heading back north, where it belongs, heralding the
chance of a break in the rainclouds. Golden light shining on a healthy dollop
of spectacular sport will do wonders for my gloomy outlook. Though I fear it
will take more than a few rays of the sun’s glare to buff up football’s tawdry
image.
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