What’s probably a scary number of years ago now, I keyboarded a piece pertaining to the beginning of a Premier League season. The title over the post was Almost Time To Take Down The Tent. The implication being that the Transfer Window in the lead up to the big kick off resembled a circus.
Much more recently, the circus has revolved around the concluding stages of the current season. At all levels of English football. Temptation might be to go straight to the lunacy regarding Middlesbrough, Southampton and the Championship Play Offs.
But no, the stench wafts down to the bottom end of that division too. And again, not having to go as far as mentioning the unjust practice of deducting points off teams because their hob nobs in the carpeted offices fu**ed up spectacularly. It is utterly shameful that both Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday were both cut adrift for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with what went on within the lines of a pitch.
In a roundabout sort of way, the same could be said regarding the fate Hull City and Wrexham in relation to the aforementioned Championship Play Offs.
Albeit from a slightly a different angle. Brought about by the fact that Football League clubs, for reasons best known to themselves, decided against availing of VAR technology at their level of football.
Mind you, it would be suggested that, if said vote was taken again it would almost certainly have a different outcome.
Especially in view of the manner in which Wrexham were rode out of a perfectly good goal in their last regular season fixture against, ironically, Middlesbrough.
Speaking of the Tee Side outfit, incidentally, for all that the prospect of our own Darragh Lenihan playing at Premier League level – if football’s most misfortunate man does ever make it back onto a pitch – is obviously a hugely exciting one, the manner in which matters involving the former residents of Ayresome Park, their conquerors Southampton and Hull City have been handled has been nothing short of an embarrassing shambles.
Principally for the EFL but also both ‘Borro and Southampton.
Say what you like about the GAA, the amateurism or otherwise of the Association, but one thing you would have to bequeath the Association with great credit for is that, in principal, when it comes to the results of actual matches, what happens on the field on the field. Do they always get it right? No, absolutely not.
In two of the most infamous cases of all time, the higher ups in the organisation made a complete balls of the matters at hand. Firstly, when the late Jimmy Cooney of Galway mistakenly called full time on an All Ireland SHC semi final between Offaly and Clare a few minutes early.
Rather than ordering the replaying of the entire bloody match, get the two teams back on the pitch, play ten minutes aside and the matter could’ve been sorted there and then. Or, from another angle, going back to another disaster one would much rather forget. Joe Sheridan’s goal in the 2010 Leinster Final.
Look, all these years later, I have no problem admitting that he absolutely crossed the line – pun entirely intended – whilst netting the goal which stunned and stuffed Louth 16 years ago. What I can never accept, though, is the decision as to whether there was a refixture or not being thrown back at Meath. It was your appointed, paid – therefore employed – official and his team of ‘assistants’ who cocked up. The GAA should have had the decency and the balls to make a determination on it themselves and not thrown the onus back on Meath.
That said, having a governing body with the cajones to make big decisions is no guarantee they will make the right one. Exhibit A being a certain hand ball by Thierry Henry. In no way could FIFA – even under the putrid misdirection of Septic Bladder and his pile of lap mongrels – claim to have not known the former Arsenal forward had blatantly cheated.
Or indeed to have fed the FAI and by extension the football world with some scour about not being able to interfere with or overrule a referee’s on-field call.
Now, at this point, it of course needs to be interjected that in the aftermath of the Rep. Of Ireland being cheated out of whatever major championship was afoot at the time, VAR technology was eventually brought in.
So right, at this stage, UEFA didn’t actually do anything about the Ireland/France debacle at the time, but, though no use to the Emerald Isle at that stage, you’d like to think no team would be wronged in as hideous and blatant a manner as our lads were back then.
However, whether the EFL or FA (whichever of them has jurisdiction in the matter) would have consulted with UEFA or FIFA before arriving at the kneejerk reaction to throw Southampton out and re-instate those from down by the Riverside!
Personally, I think reason for and manner in which Southampton were turfed out of arguably the most important game in world football is pure bullshit.
So what if Southampton spied on ‘Boro training? What difference was it going to make? It’s not as if the undercover operatives were going to discover anything they didn’t know already.
“Holy shit lads, the keeper sneezes five after diving on a ball, get in around him for the rebound” Utter madness and the ultimate storm in an egg cup.
Having said all that, strange as it might seem, to me, that hasn’t been the most bizarre narrative in soccer for the last few days. That dubious ‘honour’ falls to whatever idiot decided to let word out that Pep Guardiola is (apparently) leaving Manchester City after Sunday next just hours before they played their most important match of the season – or perhaps the decade in their case – against Bournemouth.
I say apparently because in fairness to the Spanish success machine, he looked taken aback when questions related to same were inevitably fired at him in the aftermath of their title challenge running aground among the Cherries on Tuesday night. Now, no doubt it will be frowned upon in some places, but, it’s one facet of this profession that has never and will never sit well with me – doorstepping individuals with the most stupid of questions in the immediate aftermath of headline grabbing occurrences.
Undoubtedly the best/worst example of such being somebody of whom I am very fond, Marty Morrissey, rather foolishly asking Brian Cody did he think a penalty awarded to Kilkenny in the dying embers of one of their eventual All Ireland victories was legit about 30 seconds after the incident happened. Yes some teachers can be grummock, ignorant and have notions about themselves, but in this instance, Brian would have been well entitled to blow a gasket. What the f**k did Marty expect him to say?
Though in fairness to the great man from Quilty in the county Clare, chances are he was under duress to ask the stupid, inflamatory question for dramatic effect.
It’s an awful pity those doing the interviews in English football don’t go straight to the nub of the issues that really hang over certain entities like a bad smell.
In the pertinent case here, rather than peppering Pep with nonesense questions about a situation which could very well be contrived, why not interrogate the higher ups at City about the slew of charges levelled against the Eastlands club. Which seem to have mysteriously vanished while the likes of Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Southampton get saddled with trumped up charges on made up ‘wrongs’ that are decidedly dodgy.
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