Cod Almighty | Diary
Any port in a storm
24 June 2020
Miss Guest Diary writes: Isn't it amazing what three months of lockdown can make you grateful for? Being allowed to visit a shop that isn't a supermarket; celebrating a lad's 30th birthday with tea and cake in the garden instead of drinks down the pub; meeting a friend for a walk at the local nature reserve instead of lunch at a favourite bistro. And watching half a dozen tedious, entirely atmosphere-free Premier League games on TV over a weekend.
Despite previously being married to a sports fanatic who would watch literally any sport, in my pre-Town world the only football matches I watched on TV were Cup Finals. Even after I was introduced by my current partner to the highs and lows of the Mariners, I only bothered to watch TV football games during international tournaments.
This changed in the mid-90s when fantasy football became popular. For about 10 years said partner ran a fantasy league in the office and I was obliged to participate. Watching Match of the Day to see which players had gained points in the fantasy world became a bit of a Saturday night ritual. After we abandoned the fantasy league, the Saturday night routine stuck. Apart from no Town games, that void on a Saturday night at 10.30 has been one of the hardest to fill in the last few months.
Now Match of the Day is back, but we managed to spoil it for ourselves by watching most of the weekend games live. Never again. Was it lack of fitness, of practice, of motivation, or the dead atmosphere in the stadiums? Whatever caused it, the football on show over the weekend – particularly in the much-trumpeted Merseyside derby – was terrible and tedious to watch. Were last night's games much better? With Gary Lineker describing Leicester's performance as "horrendous", I'm guessing not.
Never having a Sky subscription, I have only occasionally seen a full Premier League match on TV before. When they do occasionally pop up on BT Sport I'm usually at a Town game. And when I have watched it's been with only half an eye.
So, tell me, are Premier League games usually that mediocre? Has the television viewer simply been bamboozled by the crowd noise and the players posturing into thinking they've been royally entertained in recent years? Could what looks exciting in ten minutes of highlights really be as poor as the stuff we subjected ourselves to over the weekend?
I have said never again but somehow I have the feeling that, come the weekend, I'll be avidly searching the schedules for free-to-air Premier League games. When you've been denied the real thing for several months, the alternatives can take on a strange appeal. I sincerely hope that Nigel Lowther's fears for Town's existence don't come to pass or I may find myself stuck with meaningless TV football forever. UTM