Some questions on the 3pm blackout

This isn't so much a blog as a response to this week's TheGame Podcast, the excellent weekly audio release from the football writers at The Times.

Much of this week's podcast was taken up by discussion of the 3pm television blackout, which operates to the effect that football cannot be shown live between 14:45 and 17:15 on Saturdays, except for the FA Cup and Scottish Cup Finals.  The podcast host Gabriele Marcotti is clearly opposed to this rule, as I am, but for different reasons.  His motivation seems to be one of libertarian principle, which I don't share; mine are practical.

My curiosity is always roused when this topic is raised – almost always by Marcotti, who appears to be the only football journalist in Britain who ever wants to discuss the subject – because I have always been convinced that no such rule exists.  I have watched much live football during this period on normal British television – without fancy satellites and foreign cable connections, which Marcotti occasionally alludes to – in England.

In January, for example, ITV4 showed the opening match of the Africa Cup of Nations live on a Saturday with a 4pm kick-off (British time).  Subsequent matches from the same tournament were similarly shown on British EuroSport – I recall flicking between Côte d'Ivoire vs Tunisia and the FA Cup 4th round updates on Final Score on BBC One.  So the blackout is clearly not a hard-and-fast 'rule'.

It is also inconsistently adhered to.  Sky Sports frequently show 5pm Spanish league matches but don't join the action until 15 minutes in, – on one occasion, this involved them joining a match between Real Sociedad and Barcelona only after Barça had taken a 2-0 lead – suggesting they regard the blackout as the law and the prophets.  Yet Welsh matches appear on S4C on Saturday afternoons regularly.

If it is the case, as some forum contributors assert, that the blackout only applies to English and Scottish football, then why do Sky apply it to their La Liga coverage?  This issue is particularly newsworthy this week as Saturday's Clásico between Real Madrid and Barcelona kicks off at 3pm (UK) but will only be shown 'as-live' at 8pm, by which time we'll probably all know the result.

Yet there are stories of EuroSport being fined for showing Ligue 1 or Serie B matches on a Saturday.  Given that it is so difficult to pin down exactly what the rule is and to whom it applies, it seems strange that no broadcaster has challenged it.  If ever there were a rule ripe for being overturned in the European courts, this would appear to be it.  Perhaps Sky do not wish to rock the boat by giving football's governing bodies something to hold against them when it comes to future rights bidding.

It clearly isn't doing broadcasters much harm, as evidenced by the ever-soaring amounts of money being paid for Premier League rights in the UK.  Further instances of it broken have hardly defied even my half-arsed research today – the FA Trophy Final in 2010 shown live on ITV4, the Olympic men's final between Brazil and Mexico on BBC One when there were SPL matches at the same time – so perhaps the question is not whether the rule should exist, but whether anybody cares.

Six Nations kicks off with a bang

The road to madness is paved with the splattered brains of sports commentators who have read too much into the opening match of a World Cup, the first round at Wimbledon, or the first Grand Prix of the year.  For that reason, this column does not speculate that a long-awaited return to expansive rugby as standard in the international game is upon us.  Yet there can only be a cautious satisfaction at the quality of fare in the first three matches of the 2013 Six Nations Championship.

The weekend began with what now feels almost part of the furniture in the Test arena: a home defeat for Wales.  Wales won the Grand Slam in 2012, which they have followed up by losing eight Tests in a row.  Wales's last win of any description was against the Barbarians on 2 June last year.

And yet in very few of these matches were Wales pulverized.  They lost their summer series in Australia 3-0, yet should have won two of those games.  In the Autumn they had a nightmare, yet only Argentina beat them convincingly.  A late try did for them against Samoa, they emerged with credit following a two-try second-half rally against the rampant (at the time) New Zealand and were 12-9 up against Australia at the death, before Kurtley Beale's last-gasp try broke Millennium Stadium hearts.

Wales-Ireland was not quite a game of two halves.  Ireland dominated for the first 45 minutes, Wales for the final 35; which is probably why Ireland won.  As a spectacle, it was splendid, illuminated by Irish win Simon Zebo, who followed his early try with an audacious mid-air backheel that turned a shoddy pass into, ultimately, a try for prop Cian Healy.

Over the Calcutta Cup hung the question: can England maintain their momentum from their spectacular Autumn triumph over New Zealand?  Another 38-point haul was forthcoming, lit up by a dazzling England midfield.  Those words have not been written often in the last decade but, in fly-half Owen Farrell and débutant inside centre Billy Twelvetrees, they had a partnership capable of ripping holes in Scotland's defence.

There is a moment in "House of Cards", the peerless British political drama of the early 1990s based on the Michael Dobbs novel, when journalist Mattie Storrin speculates that the Tory conference is 'happening in code', that it is 'really about something else'.  This championship is similar; the great debate over the British & Irish Lions squad continues throughout.

So give thanks, then, that the embryonic championship is proving enthralling in its own right.  England's deserve credit for beating convincingly a Scotland side who did not at all play badly, and for whom full-back Stuart Hogg and No 8 Johnnie Beattie put in outstanding performances that should give cause for second thoughts to those who speculate that the summer's touring party to Australia will have a Scottish contingency that could arrive at Heathrow airport in a Mini Cooper.

England's scrum half Ben Youngs was back to his best, the marvellous Geoff Parling try coming from his break and a raking long pass from Farrell.  England go to Dublin ahead of next Sunday's encounter at Lansdowne Road with a spring in their step.

Speculation that this might be the best opening weekend in Six Nations history became solid certainty on Sunday afternoon when the Italians deservedly beat France in the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.  There was plenty of graft and grind but also evidence that Italy can, on occasion, produce moments of attacking brilliance.  The move that led to Sergio Parisse's opening try was quite wonderful and would have graced the Stade de France or Eden Park.

France must visit Ireland and England and already have little chance of winning the tournament.  Yet perhaps the most interesting fixture next weekend is Scotland vs Italy, perhaps no longer a wooden spoon play-off in all but name.  Scotland must get more possession than they did at Twickenham; they showed enough in England to convince that they now know how to score tries.  The constant fall in try-scoring in the Six Nations is much-lamented, but the opening three fixtures offered a mere hint that defences may no longer be on top.

Samoa defeat leaves Wales on the edge

Oh dear.

In a way, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.  Beating Wales at rugby union in Cardiff is a national pastime for Samoans, so Friday night's 26-19 victory at the Millennium Stadium could be construed as par for the course.

But who are we kidding?  Look at the relative resources of the two rugby countries: Wales should be beating Samoa at home.  Yet the final score here did not do justice to Samoan superiority.  What has happened to Welsh rugby since the Six Nations grand slam triumph in March?  The domestic game is haemorrhaging its best Welsh players to the French championship and, with selection policy in what might kindly be called a state of flux, Wales have looked inept so far in the Autumn internationals.

"Wales's forwards could hardly have been more ineffectual had they picked a front row of Katherine Jenkins, Neil Kinnock and Kimberley Nixon."

Sam Warburton, the talismanic captain from last year's World Cup, was dropped after the comprehensive defeat to Argentina last Saturday but it made little difference.  Samoa won the physical battle; the Welsh forwards could hardly have been more ineffectual had they picked a front row of Katherine Jenkins, Neil Kinnock and Kimberley Nixon.

The half-back combination is also up in the air; Dan Biggar had a torrid time and was replaced by Rhys Priestland before half-time.  With full-back Leigh Halfpenny now the principal goal-kicker, if the fly-half is not providing attacking creativity, there is nothing else to fall back on.  Still, at least Wales did not undermine themselves by leaving out Mike Phillips, easily the best British scrum half of the last few years, for having the temerity to miss the Polish training camp in order to, you know, play some rugby in France.  Intense physical conditioning is all very well, but picking your best players is still the most important thing.  As Martin Samuel wrote after the Argentina match, in which Tavis Knoyle wore the number 9 jersey, Wales "…seem a little like the Royston Vasey XV: a local team, for local people."

Perhaps the Six Nations was the anomaly.  For all the furore over Wales's escapades in New Zealand last year, the fact remains that they lost every match against substantive opposition save the quarter final against Ireland and were whitewashed in their summer tour of Australia.  Yet at least those defeats to the powerhouses of the international game had silver linings; Wales showed character and promise in the semi final defeat to France, in which they were comfortably the better side despite spending over an hour a man short.  The last two performances have been irredeemable.

The Six Nations is increasingly looking like the second division of international rugby.  Things have come to a pretty pass when, to see how to score tries against capable opponents, Wales are obliged to look to Scotland.  Or, even more depressingly, England; the nation who for years have created the impression they think rugby can be played even if nobody brings a ball.  England begin today's matches as strong favourites to defeat Australia.  Wales are now clinging on to a place in Pot 2 for December's World Cup draw.  With Argentina resurgent, a result against Australia or New Zealand may be needed to do so.  Good luck with that one.

Wimbledon fans must not be divided over FA Cup tie

The press are variously describing it as a 'mouth-watering tie' and a 'grudge match' but neither are really accurate.  The FA Cup second round tie between Milton Keynes Dons and Wimbledon is not really a grudge match as there is simply no history or heritage of the fixture, and for a very good reason; there is no history or heritage of Milton Keynes Dons at all.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that Wimbledon supporters are savouring the opportunity to beat MK Dons and settle any scores.  This is not a rivalry, this is a principle.  For almost all Wimbledon supporters, MK Dons is a football club that simply should not exist; a club which stole Wimbledon's place in the league by dubious means and who ought not to be recognized at all.  This is a match many are simply dreading, as they never wanted it to happen.

When Saturday Comes, the excellent monthly magazine, still does not officially recognize MK Dons.  Their annual season preview supplements, in which supporters of the other 91 league clubs in England answer questions on the season ahead, simply has 'No questions asked' in the MK Dons section.  For some, this now appears archaic and petty; for many others, it is a perfectly reasonably adherence to a consistent stance on the issue.

The key issue for Wimbledon fans is now whether to go to the match.  Many have vowed never to set foot in the pretentiously titled stadium:mk, some even lobby other clubs' supporters not to go to away matches there, a request which is acceded to by many.

But there are others who feel that they simply want to support their team, whoever they are playing.  There is no reason why going to support Wimbledon away at MK Dons should be read as acknowledgement of the latter club's 'legitimacy'.

The most important thing, therefore, is that Wimbledon fans respect each other's choice.  The match has to be played: Wimbledon would face severe sanctions if they refused to play.  The alternative is to be divided and conquered.  Those who go are not 'scabs' crossing a picket line.  Both positions have a certain logic behind them, it is simply a question of personal conviction.

What of other supporters?  With the predictability of day following night, ITV Sport have chosen the match for live Sunday lunchtime coverage, so we will all be able to intrude on private grief.  There is, though, talk of the away end being filled by a kind of 'Fans United' assembly, with supporters of other clubs turning up, in their colours, to support Wimbledon against 'Franchise FC'.  A show of unity in the face of what many perceive as being the face of all that is wrong with modern football.

This has a certain appeal but a personal view is that this would miss the point.  The issue here is identity and legitimacy, which transcend the game.  Wimbledon beating MK Dons will not settle any scores, just as MK Dons would not gain the moral high ground if, as is likely, they win through to the third round.  The result is, in many ways, an irrelevance.

Nadal the unknown quantity in new tennis era

Men's tennis does rivalries rather better than most sports.  With the top players meeting so regularly, the major duels – McEnroe-Connors, Becker-Edberg, Agassi-Sampras, Federer-Nadal – build up a sense of continuity and a sizable body of work.  Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have played each other ten times in Grand Slam tournaments alone, 28 times in total.  How many times did Muhammad Ali fight Joe Frazier?  Three.  George Foreman?  One.  Not really the same, is it?

The Federer-Nadal era, though, is over.  When Nadal handed Federer's backside back to him on a silver salver at the Australian Open earlier this year, it had the feeling of a curtain call for tennis's most engrossing rivalry of all time.

And yet it was Federer who won Wimbledon, with Nadal crashing out to Lukas Rosol.  Indeed, that balmy night when the unheralded Czech blasted Nadal off centre court – has there ever been a match when a player simply hit the ball so consistently hard? – remains Nadal's last tennis match of note.  It is testimony to Federer's genius that, even on the wane, he came back to win Wimbledon, despite the fact that Andy Murray played so well in the Final.

With Federer aging gracefully, what of Nadal?  Has his left knee turned into blancmange?  To miss half a year's tennis will leave doubt in the mind of even the most dedicated of the Spaniard's disciples.  Perhaps the French Open, comfortably the least interesting of the four majors in recent years due to the sense of it being little more than a two-week coronation, will be competitive at last.

Perhaps, then, it is time to acknowledge that, in place of Federer-Nadal, we now have Djokovic-Murray.  That the latter pair are now the two best players in the world is becoming harder to refute.  Murray has been a different animal since the Olympics, which looked and felt like the fifth Grand Slam championship that, if the ATP have any sense, it will officially be – in ranking point terms – come the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.

Inferiority complexes are everywhere in sport.  It doesn't matter how good Germany are, they will always lose to Italy.  Murray never used to quite believe he deserved to be contesting best-of-five Finals with Roger Federer, which is probably why he won just one set in the first three.  The Olympic Gold Medal Final, though, was a rout.  Even against Nadal in that Melbourne semi final, Federer never looked quite so inferior as he did in the Wimbledon re-match.  The poverty of his performance was staggering and, were it not for a patriotic desire to see Murray win gold, would have been a little heart-breaking.

Murray or Djokovic will almost certainly win the 2013 Australian Open; their best chance of avoiding each other in the Final seems to be being drawn in the same half.  Federer will be there or thereabouts at SW19 but, when talented but decidedly second-tier players such as Tomás Berdych and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are capable of knocking him out in the quarter finals, he is far from the favourite.

Murray-Djokovic has the potential to be every bit as totemic a rivalry as Federer-Nadal.  Both players have their best years ahead of them and their meetings are now genuinely in the balance.  Who won matches between Federer and Nadal often depended on which surface they were playing.  On grass and hard courts, Djokovic and Murray look pretty much neck-and-neck.  Clay tournaments are a whole different story and the fitness of Nadal looks like being the key question in men's tennis in 2013.

We've got the truth, now for the justice

The thing about the phone hacking scandal is that we really ought not to have been surprised.  Hearing that the upper echelons of politics, the police and the press were hand-in-glove, and not in a good way, should have elicited from us little more than a weary sigh.

Some of us did not need to be told that Hillsborough was a monumental cock-up by the South Yorkshire constabulary; compounded by a vicious, cynical cover-up by way of a dirty tricks campaign against the victims.  Yesterday’s report into the tragedy was confirmation, not revelation.

So we have the truth.  But truth without justice will mean the bereaved families of Merseyside will still not be at peace.

For their part, the Football Association were right to offer a full apology, albeit after a fashion.  The semi final simply should not have been played at Sheffield Wednesday FC.  The ground’s safety certificate had expired but the ground was chosen anyway.  There had been chaos at the 1981 semi final there between Spurs and Wolves yet the ground was chosen anyway.  This, you see, was ‘the good old days’; we didn’t bother with all this elf ‘n’ safety nonsense.  We had common sense.

There are others from whom a mere apology is not enough.  Falsifying evidence is a crime.  Bullying junior officers to make substantive alterations to witness statements is a crime.  Killing through negligence is a crime.  Perverting the course of justice is a crime.  Conspiring to provide a false defence against charges of manslaughter, even after the fact, is a crime.

If the establishment want us to believe that this is a new era, in which justice cannot be ducked by those in power, and the press cannot be used to cover your backside, then certain people need to be brought to book.  These people were powerful: they occupied top positions in the government and the police.

Some are dead and have escaped justice.  Many are now retired.  But retirement from work is not retirement from civilization.  People have committed manslaughter and others have conspired with them after the fact.  Thatcher’s government used the police as their private army, and nowhere more than South Yorkshire.  In the 1980s it was a very dangerous place to be a working class northerner, such as a miner or a football fan.

It doesn’t matter how old David Duckenfield is, or how ill he says he is.  Arrest him and try him.  It shouldn’t matter that Bernard Ingham – Margaret Thatcher’s then chief press secretary – is eighty years old, or that Margaret Thatcher is demented.  Arrest them and try them; wheel them into court on a hospital bed if necessary.  Their status must be no protection from justice, just as the lowly social status of Liverpudlians in 1989 should not have been a barrier to it.

Others must also pay the price.  Kelvin MacKenzie, who only yesterday accepted that he wrote malicious lies in the Sun, must no longer appear on the BBC.  No serious newspaper should allow him to divest himself of his odious views in their pages.

Boris Johnson, who perpetuated the lies in an editorial in the Spectator in 2004, has apologised and should now resign the London Mayoralty.  If he believed what he wrote he is an idiot; if he didn’t, he is beneath contempt.  Either way, he is not fit for public office.

‘Sir’ Norman Bettison, then a South Yorkshire chief inspector, who was heavily implicated in the police cover-up and subsequently made chief constable of Merseyside, of all places, must resign as chief constable of West Yorkshire.  That knighthood doesn’t look too clever, either.

There is one other group of people who ought to be examining their consciences.  Football hooligans.  Those sociopathic tribal drunkards who stole the terraces from peaceable football supporters in the seventies and eighties are responsible for conditioning the British public so that they believed the lies cooked up by the Tory government, the South Yorkshire police and the Sun.

Justice must sweep through the intransigence and the obscurantism like a wrecking ball.  Only then can the bereaved families of Hillsborough’s 96 victims begin to truly come to terms with their loss.

Trial and retribution

by Mike Martin   @thefootietweet

If John Terry were Scottish, chief magistrate Hamish McRiddle would probably have returned a verdict of ‘Not Proven’.  Only Scottish courts are capable of declaring a case not capable of being judged either way.  Back in the real world, John Terry is an innocent man, except, of course, it is not as simple as that.  We can divide the population into four broad categories according to their response.

First, there is the ‘sticks and stones’ group, who believe that calling somebody a ‘black’ such-and-such is no different to calling them a plain old such-and-such; that footballers are paid more than enough to take whatever insults come their way and if the loony-liberal-lefies don’t like it they can sod off and write to the Guardian.   On grounds connected with the briefness of life, we needn’t bother with this group.

Then there is what you might call the ‘indignant vindication’ category.  In this category we find those who always believed Terry was clearly innocent, that his innocence is now legally established fact and that ought to be the end of it.  Heck, sue Anton Ferdinand for slander while we’re at it.  Of these people, particularly their gifts of omniscience and the judgement of Solomon, I am most envious.

The ‘He’s Got Away With It’ group is sizable, if the immediate response on social networks is any kind of decent measuring stick.  The broad feeling within is that Terry was as guilty as hell and got off on a technicality.  John Amaechi, the former NBA basketball player: “Thanks football – you set entire country back a decade.  ‘Black c***’ now officially ok to say.”  The same man Tweeted to me – if you’ll forgive a spot of name-dropping – “…but court did NOT ‘clear’ JT; it ‘had no choice’ but to declare not guilty”.  In other words: Terry was guilty but just not quite guilty enough.

We know one member of this group.  Rio Ferdinand’s ill-advised endorsement of another Twitterer’s half-witted racist slur against Ashley Cole may come back to haunt him.  Aside from the unhelpful inference that Ashley Cole perjured himself at Terry’s hearing, the term ‘choc-ice’ is particularly pernicious because it implies that there is a ‘black’ thing to do and a ‘white’ thing to do.  The ‘black’ thing to do, it seems, would be to say whatever you have to say to get somebody accused of racial abuse convicted.

A splinter group of the above, the ‘What About Luis Suárez?’ club, profess bewilderment as to how the Uruguayan could be banned for eight matches ‘despite no proof’, yet Terry can ‘get off’ even though there is ‘clear television evidence’ against him.

This view fails to take into account the plain fact that Suárez and Terry were involved in two different incidents.  Just because one is guilty or innocent, it does not follow that the other must be the equally so.  The differences between the two cases are numerous.  One went to an FA hearing, the other a legal trial, so there was a higher burden of proof for those prosecuting Terry.

Suárez was banned ‘on the balance of probabilities’, meaning, in essence, that the 3-man FA panel believed Evra and not him.  Terry was acquitted because it could not be proved that he was guilty.  What if Suárez had had his day in a court of law?

The two players also entered different defences.  Terry’s was a flat denial: he did not call Anton Ferdinand an ‘FBC’; he was merely rejecting an accusation by the QPR player, and that was what was caught on camera.  Quoting something, his defence team successfully argued, is not the same as saying it yourself.  Suárez, on the other hand, did not deny using the word negro or negrito, but denied intending to offend Patrice Evra.  ‘Negro’, he argued, is not the Spanish equivalent of The N Word; it is a harmless term of affection, for which no English word is a direct translation.

This defence foundered for two reasons.  Firstly, as the word was said in the course of a heated argument with a player from Liverpool’s bitterest rivals, the FA panel concluded that it was not said on amicable terms.  Secondly – and here is the important bit – there is the principle that whether or not a word is racially offensive is up to the interpretation of the victim, not the meaning of the perpetrator.  In other words, it was not for Suárez to say whether Evra ought to be offended or not by having his colour referred to.

On balance, and with many months’ reflection, perhaps the FA ought to have given Suárez a shorter ban initially, with a whacking great big suspended one over it in order to set a precedent.  Though the cultural defence was quite properly rejected when considering the verdict, it could have been taken into account when calculating the length of the ban.  As soon as Suárez conceded that he had said the offensive word, it was case closed with regard to the verdict.  The punishment, though, ought to have had an educative element.  That it didn’t leaves us with what some regard as a blatant inconsistency between the two cases.

After decades of being oblivious to racial issues, football has now become hyper-sensitive to them.  It is not ideal but it is better than what we had in the seventies and eighties.

The FA now find themselves in an invidious position.  No credible charge of racist abuse can be brought against Terry given his criminal acquittal; yet to do nothing would be a scandalous dereliction of duty.  Both Terry and Anton Ferdinand ought to be charged for their pathetic, profanity-peppered tiff on the Loftus Road pitch all those months ago.  Rio, too, ought to be very severely reprimanded for his apparent endorsement of the ‘choc-ice’ slur which has now attracted the attention of the Derbyshire constabulary.

Most importantly of all, though, they must not waste an opportunity to clean up English football’s image.  For the idiotic fans, who will surely chant abuse at whichever of Terry, Cole and the Ferdinands don’t play for their club, there is no hope, short of a frontal lobotomy.  Referees, meanwhile, need to be instructed in the strongest possible terms to clamp down an all foul language.  Insulting or goading an opponent ought to be regarded as a punishable offence under the existing gentlemanly conduct rule.

There are those who believe such strict refereeing will result in a torrent of red cards but so be it.  Footballers are generally pragmatists.  Behaviour will adapt quickly.  It cannot happen quickly enough.


Mike Martin is the club reporter at @PickeringTownFC and has written for Late Tackle magazine.