Welcome back to the National Game

There once was a time when the start of a new football season was something that happened quietly one Saturday afternoon in August. Non-football fans would only know it had begun when they started seeing people in scarves and funny looking tops getting off trains and walking through towns to nearby football grounds. If they were in town later in the afternoon there would also be the other tell-tale sign of large numbers of men stopping outside Rumbelows or Radio Rentals at 4.45 to look at the mini-printer and Final Score as it brought up the results of the days games.

On TV, aside from Final Score, football would also push its way into the TV schedule on a Saturday evening, just after an American TV detective who normally had either a weight problem (Cannon) a disability (Ironside) or a love of lolly pops (Kojak), unless they were called Starsky and Hutch, in which case they just had an inability to get in cars by the normal method of opening the doors. Each week you’d get highlights of three matches from the top league and then that would be it for another week, unless you were a real football devotee, in which case there was The Big Match on ITV on a Sunday afternoon.

The people who came up with the name The Big Match clearly had a grasp of irony that passed most of us by. The programme had highlights of several matches, but none of them fitted the description Big, as all of them were from the Second Division. A better name for the programme would have been ‘The moderately sized match that is the biggest thing we can show because the BBC have Match of the Day and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ But that would have taken a lot of space in the TV times even when it did only have one channel in its listings.

For anyone under 40 this may sound hard to believe, but anyone over that age will remember these as simple times. If you want to know how simple, look no further than that the Second Division was the second level of English football, not something that was one step above the non-league pyramid, and the name of the knock-out competition played by teams from the Football League was The Football League Cup. You really knew where you were in those days.

Wind forward some 31 years since the league cup became The Milk Cup, or 30 years since ITV screened Tottenham Hotspur v Nottingham Forest as the first live top flight game on TV, in an age where there was no need to add the word ‘Terrestrial’ before TV to make it clear what type of channel you were talking about, and it’s a very different world.

The start of the football season has gone from being something that just happened to something that gets trailed for at least a month in advance, with newspapers and Sky building up to the big moment with an air of anticipation and a sense of mystique and excitement about the outcome, that belies the fact that the top four, if not the bottom three of the Premiership are pretty much a foregone conclusion. It’s almost like advertising an episode of Poirot and saying ‘will there be a murder and will the little Belgian detective be able to crack it?’ The Premiership, and Champions League, are sold in a way that the content simply does not justify, and the endless eulogising about what we can all look forward to, just serve to make it something that cannot fail to disappoint.

And yet, TVs vociferous appetite for all things football continues to grow, unless you live in Scotland and want to find a broadcaster who cares about your national league. Its impact on mainstream TV may have lessened thanks to Sky’s millions, and the inability of attempts to loosen its grip on the domestic game to do anything other than increase the number of pay TV providers taking your money, but like the nations favourite soaps, the overall amount of TV time it consumes has grown exponentially.

But in much the same way as the growth in volume of soaps, and the increased number of episodes of each one, led to declining quality, so the increase in the amount of live football on TV has seen the ratio of good to bad matches swinging firmly in favour of the latter. For every great match there are several more where the phrase ‘it’s not turning out to be the game we expected’ will be heard before the 90 minutes are up. Indeed that phrase is heard so often that it should now be reserved for the edge-of-your-seat, roller-coaster ride of thrills, spills and excitement type games, rather than the largely dull games that only have you on the edge of your seat when your eyes close and you start to fall off the sofa.

As this happens, event TV is becoming non-event TV. While the first live matches on terrestrial became stay at home programmes for most football fans, and the first games shown on Sky made the early days of Sunday afternoon pub opening seem like something that was filling a deep un-catered for social need, these days most live matches are just something on in the background at the local with only a few people breaking away from their I-phones, or their children’s wilful destruction of pub furniture in the absence of any child friendly toys, to bother to watch.

Clubs need the money, thanks to the upwards uncontrollable spiral of wealth that the first Sky contracts set in motion, so live football will remain a fixture on TV, but for me, and I suspect a lot of other people, the highest levels of the professional game football is eating itself. I no longer have the interest in it that I did, and no longer recognise it as the game I loved when I could only watch it in highlight form on Saturday night TV. Of course we still have Match of the Day, but the way that programme has gone from being exciting easy access TV to another example of something else that elevates the national game to a level of art and discussion it doesn’t deserve, could take up a blogpost in itself. If only I could watch it without a finger on the fast forward button, that is.  

Wigan V Crystal Palace

Responding to the victory that takes them back to the Premiership, Ian Holloway, the Crystal Palace manager, apparently said they are 'on a hiding to nothing'. This honest assessment has immediately lead to many people getting the wrong end of the stick and saying he's already written off their chances of survival. The determination Holloway showed in trying to keep Blackpool in the Premiership shows that he is not a man to give up easily, and however hard the job might be, he'll still be trying to win games until relegation is a mathematical certainty. 

More importantly, if the experience of Blackpool is anything to go by, he'll also be trying to play entertaining football, and not just taking his team to shut up shop in their own half at every ground they go to. And this is the way it should be, for Holloway is right, Palace are on a hiding to nothing, and if relegation is almost inevitable, it's far better to do it in a positive way, by trying to compete.

If you don't believe me, then look at the team they've replaced. Wigan were on a hiding to nothing for eight seasons, but in all that time they've never played like a team for whom finishing 17th is the target. On their first game in the top flight, they held their own against Chelsea in a game that was starting to look as if the referee would carry on playing until Chelsea scored, which they eventually did in the 95th minute. Jose Mourinho admitted they did not deserve to lose, and they went on to defy the odds time and time again. Testament to their approach to football is Roberto Martinez looking destined to become manager of Everton. Would that have happened if Wigan had played like a team resigned to their fate, more concerned about clinging on to the premiership millions than about the value for money they provided for their supporters? I doubt it.

In winning the FA Cup and getting relegated in the same season, Wigan have achieved an unfortunate first (although Birmingham managed a similar feat when they won the league cup two seasons ago). It's again testament to Wigan supporters that, for the most part, they seem to be saying they would rather have won the FA Cup and gone down, than lost it and stayed up. It's a recognition of what football should be about - the excitement about achieving something, rather than pulling off an annual battle for survival where the prize for success is questionable.

I know people will say that a prize for success of between 50 million and 120 million is hardly questionable, but the value of this money isn't what it seems when you compare it to the budgets of the big four and the other top teams. You still have a playing field that is as unlevel as Barnet's Underhill Stadium, and, in spite of the vast amounts of money you get, you still end up comparatively poorer than you were at the start of the season, always expect to lose more matches than you win, and know that the next season might be even harder as your top players are picked off by other clubs further fuelling the rise in wage bills you have to compete with. 

That, to me, is why if you get in the Premiership you have to enjoy it. Go out and play entertaining football, try to win, and give your fans something to savour, not something that will bore them rigid for the season . Accept that there is a fair chance of relegation, but don't worry about it. After all, if you drop down a division, while you may lose your 50 -120 million, you'll be playing against teams that don't have the parachute payments you get, and your lower income suddenly becomes worth a lot more than the higher income you used to get. You become a big team in your division, and once again have the excitement of a season where something other than survival is at stake.

Holloway got that at Blackpool, successive Wigan managers got that when they were in charge, and some of the other unlikely success stories in the premiership have also got it, playing football without fear, and competing, not just trying to survive.

I'm not a fan of Crystal Palace, although I do like Ian Holloway. I don't care if they stay up, and would actually be happy if they came down as a result of a long standing grudge against them for conning a referee into giving a penalty that effectively sent my own team out of the Championship nine years ago. But all of that aside, I still hope that when they do go down, they've had an enjoyable season.

National Rip-Off Store Day

Saturday's National Record Store Day proved two things. The first was that there is a great demand for vinyl and collectors items, and this isn't just confined to old gits like me who remember when vinyl was all you could buy. The second was that record companies, if not record stores, will use any opportunity they can get to rip people off and screw them out of as much money as possible.

For this reason, my first national record store day is also likely to be my last.

Until now, I have felt a mix of guilt and anxiety at missing the yearly event on a consistent basis. Guilt because I wasn't supporting local record stores, and anxiety because I knew I might be missing out on limited edition vinyl-only tracks by people I like. Thinking that I would never get the chance to hear, let alone own, these tracks made me determined to make the effort this year.

I left the house relatively early on Saturday to go to Banquet records in Kingston. I foolishly thought it would be a case of turn up, pop in, and check out. Instead I found that my 'relatively early' was other people's 'very, very late' as the queue outside the store not only reached the end of the road, it went round the corner, up another road and past a car park. Some of the people at the front of the queue, and the ones who'd already been in the store and gone by the time I arrived, had been there since the previous evening, queuing as if it was The Sale at Debenhams, or the opening of a new IKEA store.

The fact that they would queue this long was what confirmed the demand for vinyl, and provided irrefutable proof that whilst some people will only download tracks and have no interest in a physical product, for other people the physical product is still the all-important thing to have. 

Record companies seem to willfully fail to realise this. Happy with the vast amount of download single sales, they ignore the fact that a lot of previously massive artists  no longer crack the top 40 with anything other than the first single from an album, if that. It's as if, for 364 days of the year, they don't get the obvious reason why this happens - which is that once you already have the whole CD, why would you want to download the single? There are no new tracks, no exclusive remixes, and crucially, no physical product, so there is nothing that a fan has to have in order to complete their collection. Hence, where once they would have bought a CD, 7 inch vinyl release, and/or 12 inch extended version irrespective of whether they had anything they didn't already own, or was any good, now they give it a miss, and even Robbie Williams can't get near the top 100 with his latest single.

But on the 365th day of the year, they sort of get it, but like being heroes, it's just for one day, and its a day when they show their utter contempt for people who want to buy records. Instead of noting the queues and thinking, 'maybe we could release vinyl versions of every single to meet this obvious demand', they think 'here's a lot of people that have waited a long time. If they want something that much, that means we can charge a lot of money for it' and act in what seems to be the British way by charging ridiculous prices and alienating the very people whose support they need.

Sample prices this year included £9 for a David Bowie 7 inch, £12 for a Kate Bush 12 inch, £11 for a Suede 7 inch, and £7 for a single by Frank Turner. Even a rabbit shaped vinyl version of Chas'n'Dave's Rabbit was going for about £8. It's as if the record companies are cutting out the middle man and immediately selling things for the sort of price they would previously have eventually traded hands at a few years later.  

Worse still, of the over 450 limited edition singles and albums that were released, the vast majority of them were simply vinyl editions of tracks already available in many formats. The Suede single was one track off their new album and one off their first. The Bowie singles included two tracks from The Next Day on one record. In short, no track you wouldn't already have if you were a real fan, but a collectors item you would have no choice but to pay over the odds for if you had loyally followed the artist and bought everything they ever did. What a nice way to say thank you to your fans. 

The record industry suffers from many self-inflicted wounds, including ignoring Napster till it was too late to stop the illegal download market getting as big as it is, but when they have the chance to do something really good to restore their reputation their default mode is to go for quick profit and exploitation of loyal fans. The long game is passed over for the quick win. Reasonably priced records 365 days a year, or one day of big money? They probably don't think twice about it. The record companies at least don't deserve your support or sympathy. Contempt is a better emotion, as that's the one they have for you.