The captain’s voice came over the tannoy.
“Ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to ask whether we have a doctor onboard the aeroplane. I’m afraid one of our passengers has been taken ill, and requires medical assistance.”
As a doctor, I leapt to my feet, a grave mistake for I smacked my head on the luggage hold and was unconscious for several minutes. I came to when a doctor put smelling salts to my nose – fortunately, by an odd twist of fate, the pilot was a psychic and had realised that I was about to crack my head open on the luggage hold. By asking for medical help before the accident actually occurred, he had ensured that a doctor would be on hand to give assistance as soon as I injured myself. How very thoughtful.
Moments later, another announcement came over the tannoy. “Ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to ask whether we have a doctor onboard the aeroplane. I’m afraid one of our passengers has been taken ill, and requires medical assistance.” This time, I refrained from leaping to my feet, but stepped gingerly into the aisle where a stewardess carefully upset scalding coffee down my leg.
Again, what could have been a disastrous accident was prevented by the pilot’s psychic powers for a doctor was immediately in attendance and applied soothing poultices to my cracking skin, thereby reducing the severity of the burns.
I settled back in my seat, only to hear another announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to ask whether we have a doctor onboard the aeroplane. I’m afraid one of our passengers has been taken ill, and requires medical assistance.”
This time, I stayed where I was. What a tragic error on my part. The doctor, tormented by what he saw as his failure to give adequate assistance to me was in a suicidal despair in the toilet. Because I failed to help him, he killed himself by disembowelling himself with a small plastic fish-knife. And to think, as a doctor of philosophy, I was perfectly equipped to help him. Life eh?
Thursday 12 May 2011
Wednesday 16 March 2011
Power Play
Apologies if the apocalyptic nature of this blog leaves you struggling to sleep at night, pacing the bedroom floor and worrying if football in its current form can possibly survive.
Sorry, but it’s too late to turn back now.
Across the border in Scotland, the SPL might well be in the terminal stages of the disease for it’s hard to see how the lack of competition caused by the outsize Old Firm, inflated expectations for the other clubs driven by a media with no sense of responsibility, and the apparently irresistible rise in player wages driven by those expectations can ever be reversed in the current climate.
But is it so very different in England? Hardly. The issue has reached the Houses of Parliament in recent weeks, a Select Committee taking evidence on the state of the game. And the state is not good.
Perhaps the most interesting comments thus far have come from the comparatively new chief of the Football League, Greg Clarke. For all that the elite would like you to believe that the Football League is little more than an anachronism, it is actually the backbone of the English game. Without its existence, without the pyramid system, the Premier League would be nothing. The dreams, the ambitions that fire those lower league outfits are what gives the Premiership its status, makes it the pinnacle.
Without that, it becomes an hermetically sealed irrelevance. If ever a perfect case in point were required, last month provided it with the three best teams in England pitted against Crawley Town, Leyton Orient – a club about to be crucified by West Ham’s insatiable pursuit of money and the Olympic Stadium - and Notts County with results that would tease the romantic’s taste buds. If nothing else, those games underlined what it is that is special about the English – and British – game and why those links are far too precious to lose.
But according to Clarke, we are at risk of doing just that. He told the committee, “Debt is the biggest problem. If I had to list the 10 things about football that keep me awake at night, it would be debt one to 10. The level of debt is unsustainable. We are heading for the precipice and will get there quicker than people think."
In finest Soviet style, Clarke and the Football League hierarchy are working towards a five year plan that he believes the clubs must embrace, though he noted darkly, “Football can be a bit backward looking - there's a penchant not to change”.
Ironically though, the issue is that football changed too much and too quickly through the 1990s and into the new century. In particular, the advent of the Premier League created a pace of change that all too many clubs simply did not comprehend. Far too many simply spent today believing milk and honey would flow tomorrow. But there isn’t enough of the stuff to make up for the amount they’ve already squandered, not even if they put all the cows and bees on overtime from here til doomsday. Apologies to Bolton for bringing them up again, but if a team with a decade of top flight football behind it is £93million in the hole and has to carry on spending just to tread water in the top division, something is horribly wrong, and those horrors simply trickle down the food chain, unlike the wealth which remains resolutely unshifted from the top.
The issue at the heart of it all is the dysfunctional nature of football in England. The Sports Minister Hugh Robertson has described football as "the worst run sport in the country" and as a member of the coalition cabinet, he should know how to recognise a shambles when he sees one. There are three governing bodies – the FA, The Football League and the Premier League – each of whose agenda runs largely contrary to the others. The Premiership cares nothing about anything else, the Football League wants to relieve them of some of their money but can’t upset them lest they close their doors forever, while the FA sits in a corner consulting Pele over its erectile dysfunction.
How did we get here? That in itself is a constructive reminder of what happens when we forget about sport and think only of money and power. The Premier League was born out of the greed of the big six as they were then, all wanting money and none caring about anybody else. Worked out really well for Everton, did that. The Football Association saw this as an opportunity for it to wrest control of the game from the Football League whose competition had grown in strength and had gradually come to usurp the FA not least because the clubs did not always release their players for international duty. England were routinely hopeless and the FA got it in the neck for that. By running the league, went the argument, they could ensure players were always available for their country and England would go and win lots of games and tournaments. That worked out as well for the national team as the Premiership worked for Everton.
It was, lest we forget, the FA Premier League. It still is, though the Premier League is none too keen on associating itself with the Football Association which is seen as impotent, incompetent – hello World Cup 2018! – and out of touch. In its hurry to beat the Football League, the Football Association created a Frankenstein’s monster of its own and before long, the Premier League did exactly what the Football League had previously done to the Football Association. Made it irrelevant.
Which is where we sit today. A governing body that means nothing. An age old infrastructure that has been rendered so destitute that it can do little more than hold out a begging bowl. And a self perpetuating elite which exists as little more than road kill for the vultures at the top. No wonder Greg Clarke doesn’t sleep at nights. Nobody who cares about football should rest easy.
Sorry, but it’s too late to turn back now.
Across the border in Scotland, the SPL might well be in the terminal stages of the disease for it’s hard to see how the lack of competition caused by the outsize Old Firm, inflated expectations for the other clubs driven by a media with no sense of responsibility, and the apparently irresistible rise in player wages driven by those expectations can ever be reversed in the current climate.
But is it so very different in England? Hardly. The issue has reached the Houses of Parliament in recent weeks, a Select Committee taking evidence on the state of the game. And the state is not good.
Perhaps the most interesting comments thus far have come from the comparatively new chief of the Football League, Greg Clarke. For all that the elite would like you to believe that the Football League is little more than an anachronism, it is actually the backbone of the English game. Without its existence, without the pyramid system, the Premier League would be nothing. The dreams, the ambitions that fire those lower league outfits are what gives the Premiership its status, makes it the pinnacle.
Without that, it becomes an hermetically sealed irrelevance. If ever a perfect case in point were required, last month provided it with the three best teams in England pitted against Crawley Town, Leyton Orient – a club about to be crucified by West Ham’s insatiable pursuit of money and the Olympic Stadium - and Notts County with results that would tease the romantic’s taste buds. If nothing else, those games underlined what it is that is special about the English – and British – game and why those links are far too precious to lose.
But according to Clarke, we are at risk of doing just that. He told the committee, “Debt is the biggest problem. If I had to list the 10 things about football that keep me awake at night, it would be debt one to 10. The level of debt is unsustainable. We are heading for the precipice and will get there quicker than people think."
In finest Soviet style, Clarke and the Football League hierarchy are working towards a five year plan that he believes the clubs must embrace, though he noted darkly, “Football can be a bit backward looking - there's a penchant not to change”.
Ironically though, the issue is that football changed too much and too quickly through the 1990s and into the new century. In particular, the advent of the Premier League created a pace of change that all too many clubs simply did not comprehend. Far too many simply spent today believing milk and honey would flow tomorrow. But there isn’t enough of the stuff to make up for the amount they’ve already squandered, not even if they put all the cows and bees on overtime from here til doomsday. Apologies to Bolton for bringing them up again, but if a team with a decade of top flight football behind it is £93million in the hole and has to carry on spending just to tread water in the top division, something is horribly wrong, and those horrors simply trickle down the food chain, unlike the wealth which remains resolutely unshifted from the top.
The issue at the heart of it all is the dysfunctional nature of football in England. The Sports Minister Hugh Robertson has described football as "the worst run sport in the country" and as a member of the coalition cabinet, he should know how to recognise a shambles when he sees one. There are three governing bodies – the FA, The Football League and the Premier League – each of whose agenda runs largely contrary to the others. The Premiership cares nothing about anything else, the Football League wants to relieve them of some of their money but can’t upset them lest they close their doors forever, while the FA sits in a corner consulting Pele over its erectile dysfunction.
How did we get here? That in itself is a constructive reminder of what happens when we forget about sport and think only of money and power. The Premier League was born out of the greed of the big six as they were then, all wanting money and none caring about anybody else. Worked out really well for Everton, did that. The Football Association saw this as an opportunity for it to wrest control of the game from the Football League whose competition had grown in strength and had gradually come to usurp the FA not least because the clubs did not always release their players for international duty. England were routinely hopeless and the FA got it in the neck for that. By running the league, went the argument, they could ensure players were always available for their country and England would go and win lots of games and tournaments. That worked out as well for the national team as the Premiership worked for Everton.
It was, lest we forget, the FA Premier League. It still is, though the Premier League is none too keen on associating itself with the Football Association which is seen as impotent, incompetent – hello World Cup 2018! – and out of touch. In its hurry to beat the Football League, the Football Association created a Frankenstein’s monster of its own and before long, the Premier League did exactly what the Football League had previously done to the Football Association. Made it irrelevant.
Which is where we sit today. A governing body that means nothing. An age old infrastructure that has been rendered so destitute that it can do little more than hold out a begging bowl. And a self perpetuating elite which exists as little more than road kill for the vultures at the top. No wonder Greg Clarke doesn’t sleep at nights. Nobody who cares about football should rest easy.
Tuesday 22 February 2011
OVER THE HILL
Maybe you saw the BBC documentary about the great Formula One driver Graham Hill on television last weekend. In these days of frenetic jump cuts and similar tricks to catch the interest of those with the nano-second attention span of the genuine idiot, it was a slower moving hour, and all the better for it, letting his story unfold with good humour, a helping of uncomfortable truth and some real warmth.
But for our purposes, I draw your attention to a clip within, from the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year show, 1971, itself a relic of a former age, from a time when it was enough to get a load of great sportsman together and celebrate their achievements rather than staging an overblown ceremony at some huge arena, an event which you – yes you member of the public – can truly affect with your text votes! As if we were voting for something as utterly pointless as which celebrity can dance or which slack jawed youth can murder a tune slightly less grievously than another.
We digress. The piece opens with Hill and the ineffably majestic Jackie Stewart engaged in what we are forced to term these days, “doing the banter”. It’s banter of an altogether superior nature, Hill playing the raffish cad to the full. “You’ve won six Grands Prix this year Jackie, which is hogging it slightly. Seven is the record. Where do you think you could have done it and it didn’t happen?” Stewart looks at him in exasperation, and with immaculate timing, returns with, “I don’t think that’s a fair question”, the pair as good as Morecambe & Wise. It’s much better in the flesh than on paper...
But amid the crowd of sportsmen and women behind them are a catalogue of giants. Geoffrey Boycott, Raymond Illingworth, George Best, Barry John, Henry Cooper, Mary Peters, even Her Royal Horseness, Princess Anne, who won the gong that year. Now we can all debate whether or not those people would cut it today, whether they could handle the changes in their sports or whether they would be even greater than they were. These are insoluble questions.
But what is not in question is that as charismatic characters, the men and women on that stage stand head and shoulders above the contemporary crowd. Whether you agreed with them or not, Boycott and Illingworth always had something interesting to say. Long distance hippy Bedford could attract controversy at will, and then there was George Best, who looked as if he’d come from rehearsing for “Jesus Christ Superstar”. To that litany, you could add the likes of Gareth Edwards, Peter Osgood, James Hunt, and umpteen others, sports stars who looked like what they were – the luckiest people on earth. Fit, young, healthy, doing the greatest job in the world and being adored for it.
Look now at the footballers, cricketers, racing drivers of today, too many of whom looked bowed down by the pressures, as if they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. A dreary bunch to be honest. But is it their fault? No. It’s us.
First of all, the pressures are unquestionably greater than 40 years ago, far, far greater. Defeats back then, even for national teams, were disappointing. Now they resemble great national humiliations, a bit like Suez or Isandhlwana. If your team loses on Saturday, even to a lucky last minute goal, prepare for the players, management and board of directors to be castigated on phone ins and message boards within moments of the final whistle. How do you handle victory and defeat in a pressure cooker like that, a world where you simply cannot treat those two imposters just the same?
More than that though, the world of media and PR has changed beyond all recognition in 40 years. Veteran journos will tell you that back then, they travelled with the teams they were assigned to, drank with them, saw all the stories and kept quiet because the players were their mates, and they were involved in it as well. Nowadays journalists and sportsmen are not friends. It’s the hunter and the quarry. It’s not entirely the fault of the journalist – the sports journalist that is – for while many are still fixated on the game, newspaper proprietors are not and they send the newshounds to dig up stories of what goes on off the field so that we can all click our hypocritical tongues in disgust. When George Best said that he spent all his money on “Women and booze. The rest I just squandered”, we laughed. If Wayne Rooney were to say the same, we’d want him strung up.
Then there is PR schooling. No top club would allow Best to talk to the media without being surrounded by media advisers. He’d be coached in how to fill the maximum amount of time in saying as little as possible, not because sportsmen are as dumb as popular lore has it – not all of them anyway – but because as soon as they say anything, literally anything, it will be twisted into something sensational. Given the current hysteria that comes from the apparent conclusion that nobody is grow up enough to have a sense of humour and be able to recognise a daft joke when they hear one any more – Top Gear and Glenn Hoddle apologies anyone? – banter is now off the menu. What we have in its place is a sporting environment that is ever more colourless, increasingly dour, ever more robotic.
Sport is an incredibly serious business for the participants because their lives, their families’ security depends upon it. For us, it’s what we do to enjoy ourselves in our spare time. The sooner we lighten up, grow up and remember it’s just for fun, the sooner we will have another Graham Hill to make movies about.
But for our purposes, I draw your attention to a clip within, from the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year show, 1971, itself a relic of a former age, from a time when it was enough to get a load of great sportsman together and celebrate their achievements rather than staging an overblown ceremony at some huge arena, an event which you – yes you member of the public – can truly affect with your text votes! As if we were voting for something as utterly pointless as which celebrity can dance or which slack jawed youth can murder a tune slightly less grievously than another.
We digress. The piece opens with Hill and the ineffably majestic Jackie Stewart engaged in what we are forced to term these days, “doing the banter”. It’s banter of an altogether superior nature, Hill playing the raffish cad to the full. “You’ve won six Grands Prix this year Jackie, which is hogging it slightly. Seven is the record. Where do you think you could have done it and it didn’t happen?” Stewart looks at him in exasperation, and with immaculate timing, returns with, “I don’t think that’s a fair question”, the pair as good as Morecambe & Wise. It’s much better in the flesh than on paper...
But amid the crowd of sportsmen and women behind them are a catalogue of giants. Geoffrey Boycott, Raymond Illingworth, George Best, Barry John, Henry Cooper, Mary Peters, even Her Royal Horseness, Princess Anne, who won the gong that year. Now we can all debate whether or not those people would cut it today, whether they could handle the changes in their sports or whether they would be even greater than they were. These are insoluble questions.
But what is not in question is that as charismatic characters, the men and women on that stage stand head and shoulders above the contemporary crowd. Whether you agreed with them or not, Boycott and Illingworth always had something interesting to say. Long distance hippy Bedford could attract controversy at will, and then there was George Best, who looked as if he’d come from rehearsing for “Jesus Christ Superstar”. To that litany, you could add the likes of Gareth Edwards, Peter Osgood, James Hunt, and umpteen others, sports stars who looked like what they were – the luckiest people on earth. Fit, young, healthy, doing the greatest job in the world and being adored for it.
Look now at the footballers, cricketers, racing drivers of today, too many of whom looked bowed down by the pressures, as if they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. A dreary bunch to be honest. But is it their fault? No. It’s us.
First of all, the pressures are unquestionably greater than 40 years ago, far, far greater. Defeats back then, even for national teams, were disappointing. Now they resemble great national humiliations, a bit like Suez or Isandhlwana. If your team loses on Saturday, even to a lucky last minute goal, prepare for the players, management and board of directors to be castigated on phone ins and message boards within moments of the final whistle. How do you handle victory and defeat in a pressure cooker like that, a world where you simply cannot treat those two imposters just the same?
More than that though, the world of media and PR has changed beyond all recognition in 40 years. Veteran journos will tell you that back then, they travelled with the teams they were assigned to, drank with them, saw all the stories and kept quiet because the players were their mates, and they were involved in it as well. Nowadays journalists and sportsmen are not friends. It’s the hunter and the quarry. It’s not entirely the fault of the journalist – the sports journalist that is – for while many are still fixated on the game, newspaper proprietors are not and they send the newshounds to dig up stories of what goes on off the field so that we can all click our hypocritical tongues in disgust. When George Best said that he spent all his money on “Women and booze. The rest I just squandered”, we laughed. If Wayne Rooney were to say the same, we’d want him strung up.
Then there is PR schooling. No top club would allow Best to talk to the media without being surrounded by media advisers. He’d be coached in how to fill the maximum amount of time in saying as little as possible, not because sportsmen are as dumb as popular lore has it – not all of them anyway – but because as soon as they say anything, literally anything, it will be twisted into something sensational. Given the current hysteria that comes from the apparent conclusion that nobody is grow up enough to have a sense of humour and be able to recognise a daft joke when they hear one any more – Top Gear and Glenn Hoddle apologies anyone? – banter is now off the menu. What we have in its place is a sporting environment that is ever more colourless, increasingly dour, ever more robotic.
Sport is an incredibly serious business for the participants because their lives, their families’ security depends upon it. For us, it’s what we do to enjoy ourselves in our spare time. The sooner we lighten up, grow up and remember it’s just for fun, the sooner we will have another Graham Hill to make movies about.
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