Real Hero!

I was browsing through an old video tape the other day when I happened upon a programme of local show, ‘Season Ticket’. It was a programme from last year, when the show still had some decent content relative to Norn Iron football fans. If you remember last year there was always a round up of local soccer games and they generally showed every game. Nowadays the programme is a whole ‘mish mash’ and rarely has little to do with the local soccer scene, although they generally manage to get some ‘Irish’ rules football, attended by one man and his dog, onto the programme. Take last week for example, the producers in their infinite wisdom decided to highlight ex-Manchester United ‘hatchet man’, Roy Keane and his progress as manager of English side Sunderland. Now can someone tell me what relevance this has to local soccer fans? Did Roy Keane in earlier years star for one of our local sides; I would even consider Derry City in this instance. The answer of course is no, Roy went straight from a Cork junior side to English football and his only tenuous link with Norn Iron fans being the fact that he played for Manchester United, before finishing his career at Glasgow Celtic, both of whom have fan bases in Norn Iron. To say that Roy was vilified by Norn iron fans, as he played for the International team they ‘love to hate’, the Republic of Ireland (or to give them their proper name, Eire), would be to make a gross understatement. I can’t really speak personally on this matter, as I didn’t watch the programme, so I can’t comment on its content. But what I will say is, I as a Norn Iron fan, out of principle didn’t watch it and found it to be in bad taste considering the recent sacking of a real Norn Iron hero, English born Ian Dowie. Ian has contributed much more to the enjoyment of local fans in his short career, than Roy Keane ever could. But to get back to my watching of the old video tape, two former Norn Iron heroes, the legendary Pat Jennings and Sammy McIlroy, were discussing among other things, the notion of naming our new National Stadium after George Best. One of the points raised was whether it would go down well with the other Sports involved, Rugby and the Gaelic crowd. But Sammy and big Pat both made the point that George was a real hero and no matter where or in what company you mentioned his name, people all over the world would know who you were talking about. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could ever say the same about Roy Keane!

Muddy Fields!

Now that I’ve set the I.F.A. to rights I’ll revert back to one of my favourite subjects, the state of opposition grounds that we visit during a season. On arrival at Limavady Showgrounds last Saturday we realised we were faced with a simple choice, go in early and get a good seat in the stand or face the likelihood of a heavy soaking if we cut it a bit fine and didn’t get a seat. Limavady you see don’t have any covered terracing, in fact they don’t have any terracing full stop. Poor and all as this is, its nothing compared to the surface the players are asked to play football on. It was considered so poor on Saturday that both sets of players had to do their warm-up exercises outside the perimeter of the pitch. Once the game started it was easy to see why, the pitch resembled a glue pot and turning was completely out of the question. The fact that both teams managed to serve up a decent game of football was all down to themselves. I can understand how hard it is for teams to get the infrastructure of terracing and stands as these things don’t come cheap, but surely their number one priority should be to provide a decent playing surface. If we had had a decent surface last week we could’ve put up with the draconian facilities, as at least we’d have witnessed a good game of football. But to have neither of these facilities, sitting in an excuse for a stand or chancing ‘your arm’ on the sidelines and finding that the ‘fayre’ being served is not of the highest quality, is enough to drive anyone to drink. We owe it to the players to give them the best conditions in which to perform and then if they don’t deliver the goods, we can point the finger at them and demand to get answers. Twice during the second half United players fluffed good openings with crosses that ballooned high over the bar and behind the goal-line and this in my opinion was solely contributable to the state of the pitch. As the old saying goes, ‘you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’, but with a decent playing field perhaps we can get a bit of real entertainment!

Le'us Alone!

I had planned to do an article last week on referee’s assistants from the opposite sex, which are gradually creeping into the local game. In the light of what happened nationally, maybe it was good thing that I got drunk instead and didn’t write that article. So to my lecture from my soap box for this week and it concerns the decision by our esteemed officials at I.F.A. headquarters to review the structure of our leagues. Association managing director Howard Wells said on National TV, that they had no plans as such to reduce the number of teams in the Premier league to 12 or 10. What a load of bullshit he spouted tonight, saying things like we need to get sponsors on board and maybe if we can get the set-up correct, we can get more money from the government. It all comes down to money in the end and Wells & Co are just jumping through the ‘hoops’ held by Belfast’s big two, who are looking for at least one more ‘big gate’ each, in a reduced Premier league. Certain criteria while have to be in place in order for clubs to participate in the new set-up, but what this entails is anybody’s guess. No doubt it’ll be whatever the ‘big two’ tell them, because they can do nothing without their say so. Linfield and Glentoran are the teams with pull and they are exerting it now and if it’s at the expense of one or two clubs they don’t give a hoot. I’m all for progress but going back to a 10 or 12 team league is not progress in my book. In fact it would be a backward step, didn’t we have a 12 team league before and it didn’t work, so why need we switch to one now, that is not progress no matter which way you look at it. At the moment we have three or four teams who tend to dominate our league, that will not change with the advent of a 10 or 12 team league, in fact they will still dominate and the result will be apathy from the other teams, whose fans will pick and choose which matches to attend. As the old saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, throw the Blues and Glens a bone, introduce a Belfast cup or something and maybe they’ll leave the rest of us to get on with our lives. Leave the league as it is and instead of streamlining it try and encourage more people to attend games and don’t undermine those who do!

Uneven Grounds!

Just a word here about the state of stadiums which we have to visit every week on our travels, Cliftonville, Glentoran and Crusaders, by a strange twist of irony three Belfast teams, are to put it mildly pretty basic. At Seaview it’s a covered terrace which costs £6 for adults and from which you can only see about 75% of the pitch, while at Cliftonville its £8 for adults and a seat in a stand at one end of the ground, view jaundiced, to say the least. The Glens of course (being a ‘Premier’ club), charge £9 for a stand which is basically terracing with seats stuck in and with massive beams at 15 yard intervals which each blot out about 10 yards of the pitch. Toilet facilities at the Oval aren’t even basic, in fact there aren’t any. Are we really in the 21^st century I sometimes wonder? We made a deal with Portadown that we would be able to use their terracing, charge £7, rather than the stand behind the goal which is at least 40 yards away from the goal-line. Imagine our surprise when we arrived at Shamrock Park last Saturday to find that the admission had risen to £8, but at least we had a choice between terracing and stand (everybody took to the terracing). Ballymena of course are not guiltless themselves, they have cordoned off a third of the visitor’s stand and have raised their charges to £8 also. Albeit the cordoning off of the stand is not down to the football club, but down to the contactor who’s building the new safety tower, where the old O’Kane stand used to be. This job was started too early in my book, it could have been done (with little disruption), after the home game with Linfield, but no we had to have Linfield fans paying £8 and not all getting a seat in the stand, an unforgivable situation. United’s next 3 home fixtures, Armagh this Saturday, Lisburn Distillery on November 25^th and Donegal Celtic on the 9^th of December, would hardly fill even a third of what seating we have, if they were all lumped together. So this work could have been carried out after the Linfield game and completed in time for our next big home gate, hopefully, at home to the ‘scum’ on Boxing day. Just a little forethought could’ve avoided any unpleasantness, a little cooperation could have gone a long way. But what am I saying, this is the same council who conveniently forgot about the agreement to terminate the contract allowing the Stock Cars to use the main arena at the Warden Street venue. Just a word here about the Official United web site, re-launched amid a lot of hype, why the hell has it not been updated since the Premier league kicked off (no match reports) and seemingly our next match is at home to Linfield. The web master and I use the term in its loosest form, was at pains to point out that he now has an informer in the United camp, who’ll keep him updated on developments. Seeing as he’s not making use of this individual perhaps he’d like to loan him/her to Sky Blue Sport, as we have to ‘guess’ what’s going to happen and occasionally we get it right. In closing I’d just like to add that everybody at ‘Sport wishes striker Paul Brown a speedy recovery from his broken foot, as the saying goes, ‘it never rains, but it pours!’