Cod Almighty | Diary

It's a funny old game

16 August 2013

Mardy Diary writes: So Town don't feature in the next block of fixtures picked for TV – although with two televised GTFC games already announced, that's no great surprise. I'm not much fussed either way – I've always struggled to engage with TV football. Don't get me wrong – if Town are on TV there's every chance I'll have the laptop on and the game up on screen. But it'll be while I'm busying myself with doing other things. Much like having the match on the radio while you sup a cup of tea in the back yard.

I think with TV football it's all the extra crap around it that puts me off from watching it. So I used to be OK with the old Goals on Sunday on ITV back in the 1990s. John Helm might mutter a sentence or two between matches ("...and the Grimsby fans are singing: 'Yorkies what's the score?'"), and the featured match would have a bit of commentary. But mostly they would just show the goals from the teams in the region, show the table and move on.

Saint and Greavsie veered towards the more jocular modern style with their in-the-know chat and 'banter', but even then it was more like watching a couple of old grandads have a chinwag. And they did cover all divisions and show games from the lower reaches of the League. You don't see any players with 'St' in their name any more, do you? Something the game is sadly missing. Unless they're all in the Scottish highland league or something...

Anyway – TV football, yes. The modern approach just bores me a bit with its over-analysis and pseudo-statistics around formations and the like. Match of the Day just seems too much like listening to a bunch of golf chums having tedious 'banter' in their gentlemen's club. There seems no escape from it, other than to switch off during the interval and at the end of the game and have the volume on mute during the match. But that just further adds to the sense of detachment from the game.

I suppose what I want is a 'Just Football' channel where they show just the match itself without comment or speculation, and no replays, and the only sound you hear is the sound of the crowd. You could even have the option to 'sit' in the crowd in a stand of your choice and you watch the match from behind that bloke who keeps standing up doing the arms-outstretched thing at a group of teenagers in the opposite stand. Perhaps they could add the sound of the bloke behind you complaining about how everything is shit and suggesting the best player be sold immediately.

Hang on, no, scratch that idea. I'll just try and get to more games.