Sunday 31 October 2010

I will fight, fight and fight again to save the game I love!

I propose some changes to the rules of association football and would like your opinions about them.

Here are the problems I want to, ahem, tackle. Too many players are sent off. Too few referees dare let common sense confuse their timorously rigid application of the rules. Early yellow cards mean defenders are thenceforth scared to tackle opponents, which is what they're there to do, for fear of dismissal. The ease with which cards are given encourages players to cheat in order to get their opponents into trouble.

Although teams can and do adapt tactically when a man short, this usually spoils the game for spectators, who are ripped off as it is. Football should be a test of skill, tactics and endeavour between two teams of 11 players, not a test of resourcefulness in overcoming - or attempting to engineer - numerically unequal opposition.

It all used to be so different ...

When I was a wee lad following Charlton Athletic I was regularly passed over the heads of the spectators so that I could throw my pocket money at opposing players while simultaneously avoiding the urine streaming down the terraces from those who could afford beer but not a seat. In those days a player’s leg would have had to reach row G in the stand for the referee even to think of sending anyone off. To be dismissed from the field of play was a sin and a shock. Fathers would shield their sons' eyes from the departing miscreant as one might from someone convicted of interfering with livestock.

We must return to those days, with the exception of letting sheep fertilize the pitch at half time, although I propose that this practice continue to be permitted at Millwall.


Here are some rules to improve things, both to enhance spectators’ enjoyment and to help bring some of the little shits who play the game into line.

1. Adopt from rugby the idea of the ‘penalty try’. Either of these sanctions will concentrate minds wonderfully after a first judicious application:
  • Award a goal if the last defender handles the ball before it would have crossed the goal line. Don't send the defender off or show a yellow card: the conceded goal is both sanction and deterrent.
  • Award a goal if the last defender (this includes the goalkeeper) brings down an attacker. Again, don't send off the defender or show a yellow card unless the tackle deserves one regardless of where it was made. Watch for cheating attackers though - see Rule 4 below.

2. Adopt the ‘Sin Bin’ instead of a second yellow card (which presently results in dismissal). Unless the offence is serious enough to deserve instant dismissal - that is, it is malicious or reckless such as to threaten serious injury, or so cynical that, elsewhere, a custodial sentence in an open facility would be required - the offender must spend 15 minutes out of the game (so is effectively dismissed if it happens during or after the 75th minute or the 105th minute if extra time is being played). Once back on the pitch, any further misdemeanour that merits a card results in straight dismissal.

3. If the last outfield defender brings down an attacker who would otherwise have only the goalkeeper to beat, send the offender to the Sin Bin (unless the nature of the challenge deserves a straight dismissal) and award a penalty, whether or not the foul happened inside the 18-yard box - so it's still attacker against keeper, but on the attacker's terms.

4. Toughen the sanctions for cheating. Send to the Sin Bin any player who dives, dissents, feigns the need for reconstructive facial surgery after a pat on the back from an opponent or asks, "anyway, how much do you f*cking earn then?" as he gets up after a robust tackle.

5. In the case of malicious or reckless tackles, the referee will only have the option of the Sin Bin or a straight dismissal.

Right, that’s sorted. Now to the Palestine Question. Which, if I can solve the problems of football as easily as I just have, should be a piece of cake. Hold my calls unless it's Tony Blair, in which case say I'm out for dinner with Henry Kissinger.

Friday 29 October 2010

They don't make 'em like that any more!


The phrase "good quality" has a distinctly old fashioned ring, yet there is a place for such traditional expression, even in today's frenetic, cost-conscious world. The quiet popularity enjoyed by the Vanden Plas 1500 is ample proof of that, and it's an intriguing exercise to discover why discerning motorists are so convinced of its sterling qualities. To begin with, the car is totally international in concept: it would look equally at home in Rome, Paris, Vienna, or any other of the great European capitals, yet it has a distinctive air of good breeding that is unmistakably British ...

Oh my God I've burst my brain.

Sunday 24 October 2010

Don't Wear Remembrance Day Poppies ... yet.

Switching on to watch Match of the Day last night – the 23rd of October – I noticed that all three presenters wore Remembrance Day poppies. Remembrance Sunday this year will be on the 14th of November, which is 23 days away.

It made me uncomfortable and annoyed. Why wear them so soon? Hallowe’en, the next peg from which we hang the year, is still over a week off and most shops’ Christmas displays are only a few months old. I’d be happier if they kept their poppies in their pockets until – let’s pick a date – say the 4th November. That’s a week before the 11th November, when the guns fell silent.

Some may consider this a bit picky or even disrespectful towards those who have died in wars, those who survived but need our help, and their dependants.

It's a tricky one. Money from the Poppy Appeal goes to what most except a few, bonkers, people think is a fine cause, so shouldn’t we welcome all efforts to increase the sum raised? I’m sure this was in mind when they prematurely decked out Messrs Lineker, Hansen and Shearer. Match of the Day has a huge audience. If more money is raised by TV stars wearing poppies now, or from Easter, or all year round for that matter, then where’s the harm? Only good will come out of it.

I disagree. I think that wearing poppies too soon devalues the significance of Remembrance Day, which is fundamentally about respecting those who have fought and suffered not raising money for them. Charity should follow from that respect, which has its source and derives its meaning from elsewhere. Subjecting Remembrance Day to the utilitarian dictates of money making and marketing, however slick, however emotive and for however worthy a cause, puts things the wrong way round.

More, it further inures us to the idea that if something can be done, it must be done. This is a variant of the business imperative which says that you should do something if it suits your purpose and you can get away with it. Although it has no place there, it influences the actions of charities, public services and often well-meaning individuals. But it doesn't necessarily follow, even in a good cause, and the assumption that it does may one day blind us to what are good causes and what aren't, which is not always as clear-cut as we may think.

The reason that Remembrance Day is important is that we think it so and make it so, not that we are told it is so, however fine the motives.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Tattoos: an apology

I have succumbed.

I have had the words "IT'S ONLY" tattooed on the inside of my left eyelid and "A DREAM" tattooed on the inside of my right one.

So, if you ever see me at a work meeting with my eyes closed, you will know that I'm not asleep.

If, on the other hand, we're making love, don't worry: it'll be the ecstasy of it all. Honest.

Monday 4 October 2010

Transporting body parts? Your questions answered!

As a youth worker on some of Buckinghamshire’s meaner streets (Stoke Poges, if you must know), I am often asked how best to transport body parts by car without drawing the attention of the Police.

The best method is as follows, assuming that your cargo is in the boot and that no EU, Health and Safety or other guidelines with regard to its transportation have been breached (in which case may the full force of the Law and the very Fires Of Hell consume you without mercy and forever).

Carry a pot of adequately watered herbs – basil, coriander, flat-leaf parsley or such like – in a prominent position, for example on the dashboard or the passenger seat. (They can be bought quite cheaply at supermarkets or dug up from neighbours’ gardens; make sure that you remove any labels first.)

If you are stopped by the Police, you will find that they will show great interest in the herbs. They will spend some time sniffing them, feeling them, holding them up to the light at various angles and squinting at you from various angles too. Let them do this for a short while.

When you see them nodding to each other in a conspiratorial fashion it is time to make your move. Do not delay. Pleasantly, and without condescension, inform them of the true identity of the herbs. Make light of their error - it is, after all, of no moment - and carefully enlist their embarrassment to steer the conversation in a direction that suits your purpose.

If this is done with skill and nerve you will find yourself sooner than expected swapping recipes, at which point you may consider the job done. They are by now no more likely to look in your boot than they are to arrest your dead grandmother for soliciting.

You drive off with a cheery wave which they repay in full measure. They do not even notice the trail of red spots as you leave. You have not only got off Scot free, but you may well now have in your culinary locker some long overdue variants on the fava beans-and-Chianti formula, which is now so 20th century, I find. Even in Stoke Poges.

Bon appetit!

On Health and Safety

I recently oversaw preparations for Health and Safety inspections of two youth clubs. They passed with decent scores, although another club managed a Mugabe-esque 99%. I can only guess that my counterpart frequently picked his nose during the meeting with the inspector.

For two months leading up to the inspections, I and colleagues prepared for them. We were assiduous. We wrote or adapted risk assessments ranging from ‘Managing Terrorist Incidents’ to ‘Playing Pool' and, just to be on the safe side, ‘Standing Up Without Falling Over’, for I am a stickler when I get going. We met often, we argued into the night, we guessed and we second-guessed; true, we sometimes erred - but only on the side of caution. At times we even wept together. But my God, we got those two youth clubs through it all!

The trouble was, we did very little else for those two months, and at a time when there were young people out there waiting for us to complicate their lives still further. And when it was all over I had to have my pregnancy-compatible office chair surgically removed from my buttocks. But enough: I could go on about the absurdities of Health and Safety but that's not really my point today. You have The Daily Mail if you need to be reminded that badly.

Anyway, as you'll imagine, a big part of me is pleased that the Government has announced that it will be taking a tough stance on Health and Safety legislation. I hope that Lord Young’s campaign isn’t just talk but also has length, width and girth. I hope he will be as purgative now as he was when he helped put a nation on the dole in the 1980s.

It’ll be tough. Health and Safety (see: even I instinctively capitalise it) is the nearest thing we have to religion now, just as safe sex is the nearest to a moral code, emotional wellbeing the closest to conscience and following a football club - I am a Charlton Athletic supporter - is our best shy at wartime stoicism. They are all of a piece.

But Health and Safety is more than a stack of regulations awaiting a match: it has a creed, a liturgy, priests, acolytes, lumpen masses, wild-eyed heretics and doe-eyed enforcers. People with power and influence really do believe in it and even those who are agnostic render its dues unto Caesar without thought, let alone comment. It's an unhappy marriage of eternal human yearning and time-bound utilitarianism in which neither partner can admit their mutual incompatibility but cling instead to the always-absent ideal of love.

In trying to reform it at the level of regulation we miss the point: like our obsession with risk and mine with Charlton Athletic, Health and Safety is a repository, however meagre, however warped and laughable, for deeper human needs, and the debate about it - if we're ever bold enough to have one - will need to have that in mind.