Author: bowlingatvincent

Cup Feeling

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The ‘build-up’ to the FA Cup Final – how long? Did somebody not bother to tell ITV that – ludicrously – the kick-off was hoiked back to accommodate god-knows-what-or-who? So they started blathering about lunch-time as usual and just kept on, presumably with the producer making windmill signs and mouthing just keepit going!! until kick-off arrived aeons later. By which time the TV audience is so bloated with nacho-consumption they’ve lost the will to live, or on the lager equivalent are so paralytic they think Roy Keane is Simon C and that the big girl’s blouse up front for Chelsea is Aleesha D. I had twigged (LOL?) we were evolving into a dumbed-down species of highlight-obsessed couch-spuds but… c’mon people.
More seriously – like hoogely/anthropologically importantly – does anyone have that real Cup Feeling anymore, I wonder? The one where dressing rooms around the isle go quiet as the radio chunters out the draw? Or where small boys skip joyfully round the living room on hearing ‘Liverpool away?’  Do they?  When the semi’s are played at Wembley? When most of the playing participants did not (now) grow up with this gorgeous fervour – indeed nobody, I suspect, grows up with it now in the way that we did – when it meant something?

How could it be the same when the powers that be schedule the kick-off for tea-time? Tea-time being – in terms of world history never mind the FA Cup – a footie-free zone in much the same way that Christmas Day, to my pretty certain knowledge, is a pancake-free festival. So audible harrumph here and like… what is occurring?
An Opening Ceremony, that’s what! With a magnificently appropriate (i.e. sickeningly glammed up) Abide With Me cherrying the naff freezer-cake. If only those flash geysers of flame that puncture the skies of North West London as the players begin their arrogant, or humble, or nervous walk to the pitch could be toppled sideways, torching the chavvy pomp of it mid-chew of its pineapple Wrigleys.
But okay the game, the game. No surprises that Fernando is on seat-warming duty again for Drogba; only this time he is genuinely unfortunate, having finally suggested the artist/striker formerly known as Torres may be cracking that hard horny eggshell. Chelsea start better. Predictably perhaps, a whiff of Sunday League from the red midfield leads to an early goal for Ramires, as Spearing’s poor touch leaves an opening. Chelsea’s burst forward is converted by the baldy-pacy-wiry one after Reina leaves his near post a tad exposed. On balance, 1-0 at the half-hour mark about right.
Chelsea seem more composed, more purposeful, less nervous. Pretty early, the sense from Liverpool fans is that they anxiously yearn rather than hope for more than mere possession; they want the ball to threaten; it doesn’t. As things develop – or not – a moment of haplessness again seems more likely than a moment of inspiration from any of the five strung across midfield. And the red support groans. Even Gerrard has that pallid look; things don’t link. We all think of the league table. The game eases to half-time.
The second chunk mirrors the first in the sense that Chelsea get a desperately easy goal – Drogba this time the beneficiary. Lampard has threaded a pass too comfortably and the Ivorian thesp has turned merely adequately and scuffed a left-foot shot through Skrtel’s legs beyond Reina. The kind of goal that turns your stomach as fan/manager/nutmeg recipient. The thought arises that Chelsea might get 4 if say Kalou was something like.
However, he ain’t. And neither – famously – has been that lanky no.9 for Liverpool. Yet on he comes, quite rightly, though not altogether in the expectation that he will change the game. Out of absolutely nothing, the ball breaks to the much maligned one in the Chelsea box. He proceeds to calmly – if slightly laboriously, if this is possible? – skin John Terry before lashing into the roof of the net. Thus the Pool go from the verge of a hammering to the lip of glory in a transformative, pony-tail bobbing slo-mo.
We, the extra-tribal to this fest, like this; partly because Carroll has at least something boyish about him, something naive, despite that clearly inadequate, over-fussed and ill-advised barnet. (But most Top Players have those, right?) He looks, on this occasion – very much to his credit – like someone who both understands and cares about the FA Cup and it’s great, actually, that he (that?) makes a difference.

This variously described giraffe/dinosaur/hetero-retro-centreforward comes on here to course about in a convincing, even occasionally lung-bursting fashion. He heads things; he frightens the metaphorical horses; he scores and has one spookily adjacent; so adjacent the post-match stuff and much of the next twenty years on Merseyside will be dominated by that particular header. If another 16 camera-angles go on to ‘prove’ that it was a save from Cech, it will rank with that Montgomery moment for Sunderland, thereby making a legitimate contribution to Cup History.
In short, Liverpool were awful then courtesy of Carroll, right back in it. They pressed for an equaliser and it never came. Henderson busied himself to almost no effect, Gerard and Suarez were ineffective to the point of listless. Elsewhere Kalou yet again showed his almost complete package of inadequacies, squandering opportunities to break and to score as Chelsea faded with the unity and purpose they had shown earlier, under the red but B Category crypto-onslaught. The final score, at 2-1 to Chelsea, was absolutely right, assuming that non-goal was correctly called. So… cue that further debate.
Despite its limitations – its obvious lack of fluency and relative vervelessness – a better final emerged than the lousy fare generally served up for this particular showpiece. Few moments of quality, none of significant shame. Chelsea in the first period cruising at a level unlikely to be attained by their opposition, you felt, but Liverpool honourably competitive at the ‘death’. No Torres. Drogba – who was again present rather than good in my opinion (sorry – IMO) and who again was greedy rather than generous, will collar most headlines… along with a disappointed rather than a disappointing Carroll.
Many Blues won’t be stopping too long to contemplate their underachievement in the second period but some will. Because running counter to the silvered but shallow and nonsensical time-shifting from the FA and …whoever, and despite the pre-match evidence for age-relevant Olympic-smudged taste-shafting, there is an appreciation of quality alive in the game. Fans want to win but they want to drape themselves in some association with glory too – implying something wonderful as well as and beyond winning. The nature of the cup – this FA Cup, this proper cup! – is conducive to that magic, making it precious. So less of the tampering, eh?

Derby.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Beware; the following is unashamedly personal…

My Grandfather – The Mighty Vic to me as I entered the adult phase – played pro football. At Doncaster Rovers, Grimsby Town and Manchester United. I believe (having been told by a source who was typically not the man himself) that he was

a) the Tommy Hutchinson of his time – although throwing one-handed, in the late 20’s onwards – and

b) he may have been for one day the most expensive player in British football before being superceded by one Alex James Esquire. (In his baggy shorts, right?)

I am openly happy to say I don’t know how true either of these stories are – to me it’s never mattered.

Vic died many years ago – sadly too many – as I was then still too immature to have those precious, allegedly and quite probably truly adult conversations about what it was all really like; that time.

My father was born and raised in Macclesfield, south of Manchester in an area now conflicted with absurdly rich young men wearing absurdly ostentatious clobbah, sweeping valleys and abrasive moors full-stopped with atmospheric and therefore memory-encrusted outcrops I do know bear the name Tors.

Don’t get me wrong with this rural pastiche thing; our lot were working class folks from within Macc itself rather than dung-clad clog-wearers from the leafy or stony or now rolex-heavy environs; they lived in streets. Now, myself, I have only a rather shamefully inadequate awareness of Man Tor being perennially present in the family consciousness – in my own consciousness in fact – and I could not confidently expect to locate it for you without a map.

Dad was a good sportsman too. Crucially for me now as a halfbreedspeaker of both Grimbarian and leeky-Welsh and long-time resident of West Wales, when apparently confronted with the choice of either signing schoolboy forms for Man City or playing full-back for Sale RFC, he chose the latter. Meaning I, his son, could later bask in the glory of his quasi-puritanical hwyl whenever a conversation in a hostelry or club bar in the province offered an opportunity for sporting/spiritual passport-production. He/we/I am authentic and have tended to be let in.

My father was in fact a really good sportsman in every sense; multi-talented; fair to the point of upright. He also did love both rugby and football – as I do – and would have shared, I know, some of my concerns about Evra/Young/Balotelli/Tevezgates and the many etceteras that unfortunately spring to mind. His club, his football club, was always City; City ’til the cruel day he died, at the (surely-this-should-have-gone-to-appeal-ref?) age of 44.

I recall him writing to Tony Book to complain (I think) about a drop in sportsmanship in the game – possibly even from City players. I picture him driving the football right-footed, with that exaggerated toe-pointed/head-descended pose he had when on those few occasions we played in the same Healing Royal British Legion Sunday Football Club side; him defending stoutly – slightly pigeon-chestedly – me twinkling up front. (I used the word pose, by the way, only in the sense of body shape; neither this bloke My Dad nor The Mighty Vic ever posed at anything in their quietly magnificent lives.)

Vic was of course United. He’d played through pain in an era when real, barely-treated pain existed for pro footballers. Pain they could feel, we could see and everyone could believe in. At twenty-six, his career was over because of it. He lived a longish and maybe predictable post-footie life; policeman/driving instructor/grandpa becoming more known and loved for his Northern trueness – his absolute lack of side – than for his sporting ‘fame’. At the age of about 70 he could head a football like… well substantially more powerfully and authoritatively than a certain Liverpool centre-forward I might mention.  He never lived to see the new gods of the Premier League and in a way I’m glad for that.

I know we’re into some generational thing here and I know its pitfalls. But look in an extraordinary week for football, for Manchester, it may even be healthy to let some sentiment, some ghosts, some history infiltrate the modern analysis. Football people exist; still. Perhaps in some crude or abstract way I wish to represent them or ingratiate myself into some imagined brotherhood that may then fight heroically against the flash and the brash and the alien. Or at least point out that the Emperor Mario is starkers with a firework up ‘is ‘arris. It feels appropriate to plant a flag for the real spirit of the game, which fortunately we will still hear and feel from the terraces of (even?) the Etihad.

United City is suddenly a mega-derby. Likely to decide the Premiership, or at least hugely important in that Manciniquest. I’ve written previously on the Psycho-joust between the two clubs and between Ole Rednose and the Gaye Gesticulator – both of whom, it strikes me, would have been recognised as proper football blokes, in their different ways, by my forefathers. For surely there is much about Ferguson and Mancini that is reassuringly toggeresque; the anger, the passion for starters; the genuineness of that twisted emotion.

What’s different is of course the inflated stuff; the hopeless arrogance around; the money. It has me turning in my own grave many years (I hope) in advance of my actual death and from the rattling down our street I sense I’m not alone in this. Boom boom.

I don’t want to be this way; it’s just… those diamond ear-thingies; an’ those jaunty caps and hats and… all that designer attitude; getting in the way of the football. To the point where actual kicking and heading cannot be understood as clean sport, independent of depressingly ego-polluted dross. Rarely does the gaining of a profile seem to come at such a cost – so many players simply seeming heartless in their privately estated unlove for the game.

There are times when many of us just simply can’t get in or get past that modern cynicism, that duff play-acting; or no longer want to. Because we just don’t get that in any game the objective appears to be to pretend something diabolical just happened… or get some other bloke sent off… or con the ref… or actually (unbelievably) as a forward player be far more interested in penalties than in scoring? (That one really does my head in.)

I know not all players are eating up the soul of the game all the time but few are entirely blameless or immune to the pervasive mind-blowing insensitivity regarding their own luck, their good fortune… and therefore their responsibility. That as much as anything sets them apart from us.

So I can think of coupla fellahs who would be offended by this latterday, allegedly Premiership stuff. But they had a particular kind of genius carrying them through; one not perhaps kicking around quite so freely on the scuffed streets of Prestbury, or coached at Lilleshall, or espoused convincingly enough elsewhere. Something to do with natural honesty being expressed through sport; which we know can happen; which can actually be – in the hackneyed vernacular? – a great joy.

So let’s take a deep breath come kick-off and throw our caps gleefully in the air. And listen for that unquenched spirit and watch for that moment of brilliance and try not to get diverted by anything. Because this could be a really brilliant derby. Couldn’t it?

Footie-family-note; just spoke to a touchingly proud and stirred mother. Wanted to add that one of many extraordinary footietales the Mighty Vic played some role in goes as follows. After retiring hurt from the game, he skippered Grimsby Police in the hugely competitive National Police Cup. They won it, at home (Blundell Park) in front of 23,000 supporters!

Wonder how the burglary figures were in Fishtown that day?

‘SING WHEN WE’RE FISHIN’, WE OWN-NEE SING WHEN WE’RE FISHIN’, SING WHEN WE’RE FI-SHIN’, WE OWNEE SING WHEN WE’RE FISH-IN’…

Pep … or pebbledash? That may be the question.

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Pep. It sounds like a Sports Drink or a feisty Weimaraner with particularly twitchy-pointed, galaxy-searching ears; that’s as well as being the prefix to ‘talk’, naturally. It could be a zingy product for the all-new sprucification of our most fungal, spaghetti-clad saucepans. It could be, in fact anything sharply illuminating and of course, in a sense, it is. So the thought strikes me that although the media has been in a state of Chelsea Approval Frenzy in the last 24 hours, it might be appropriate to check that reactionary imbalance by returning, for a moment, to the previous state of Guardiola idolatry; Pep being quite genuinely prince of most of what is good (in football) and cleansing even.

Post the fascinating and revealingly crypto-jingoistic ‘reactions’ to Chelsea’s victory over the Catalunyan Gods, I advise some further reflection. On the one hand because I am – uncharacteristically, in my defence – applying the enthusiasm break and on the other because frankly our judgements have surely been on the pop. Pep’s carousel may have twirled in a country cart-wheel rather than a metro-sexually cosmic kindofaway last evening but come on guys, some proportion pulleeease.

I know… the irony, the irony….

But I keep seeing that Chelsea centre-forward – him, the ‘African Lion’ one – rated 8; Miereles 7; half the Barca team 6. I’ve seen a sub-heading ‘Drogba tour de force’. I’ve heard oodles of supportive pebbledash around that house-sized museum-piece English Grit and Determination. And it’s got me hacked off.

Okay so Chelsea won an admirable victory against a side so widely regarded to be the best in the world that discussion on that, at least, seems pointless. They were indeed well organised and the arguably heroic John Terry and his nominal(?) manager have to take substantial credit for these facts of the matter, interloping cruelly as they do into my altogether more supra-factual argument. I can buy and even raise a churlish grin to the win for journeymen lumpers over twinkling throroughbreds. However I might just remind the chest-thumping hordes that despite said win Chelsea’s throwbackism is something Pep (and the rest of the sentient universe) is entitled to put into perspective. Something his team may well yet do upon the return fixture.

Let me dare to go on the offensive – worse – the pretentiously offensive. For somewhere in the holding-player-free midfield of my absurdist pomp I do feel a righteous indignation brewing; one that I hope might in some way reflect the inspired tippy-tapping of diminutive boots in the Barca heartland. (Did warn you!) It feels like (and perhaps I kid myself?) worryingly ambitious footietruths flutter beneath my fingertips like passes waiting to be threaded. But am I man enough – as in brave enough, courageous in a Xavi-esque, accepting a pass in an unfeasibly tight ‘situation’ fashion enough – to actually express this ludicrously purist vision/deception/hallucination juggling its er… balls? Because the question is about seeing what’s really there… and what quality it has. Right?

Chelsea dun gud. Without any one of them being creative hardly at all – indeed maybe (sadly?) because not one of them tested the deliciometer – they were able to rumble towards the win. They neither broke the Catalans’ spirit nor really tested the core of their defence – known to be the one near-human weakness they deign to exhibit. Despite this, defensively, all over the park, they did a job on Barcelona and that may rightly be viewed as a triumph. Just not really by me.

Chelsea do have some quality and I merely suggest therefore that their limited game-plan undershot given the conspiracy of fortunes working in their favour. (Woodwork smudged and gimmes unclaimed, remember?) They cannot have aspired, pre-match, to give possession away routinely cheaply or fail to generate chances or momentum through retaining the ball or through individual moments of skill. I expect them to be disappointed that – for example – Drogba missed two real opportunities in the first handful of minutes through lousy first touches. And that his clumsiness with those precious openings was mirrored throughout by a general coarseness in play. And I repeat I do understand why Di Matteo took a defensive approach and that I am unable to argue it was unsuccessful but… look at the other side. The brighter one.

Pep and his truly magnificent representatives talk a good game and then they go play it; consistently. They are a special incarnation of the most pure expression of Skill Theory – a theory I am about to make up but which (fair do’s) they own and personify, actually. Their/my theory is about the simple, unequivocal supremacy of skill over muscle. They are the oak-beamed, lime-plastered dreamhouse, the rest the dour or pebble-dashed semi. Consequently I unashamedly favour an oaky, carousel-appreciative position on footie. And I have to defend it against heathen incursion by luddite Englishmen like Mikel, Drogba and Ivanovic.

Last night notwithstanding I reckon the overwhelming success of Barcelona FC may be the single greatest joy of and for the sporting billions currently resident on the big blueish toggerball we call home. Theirs is the most sublime achievement in an age and environment where short-termism, cynicism and outright dishonesty tend to prevail. They are certainly not beyond the occasional lapse – diving or at least exaggeration springs to mind – but the higher quality of their higher purpose should not only be applauded… but protected. In this sense I cannot join entirely with the whiff-of-regression-to-clumphood-associated chorus of approval for Chelsea. We’ve spent too many decades bemoaning lack of quality to suddenly trump it.

Lastly a further word on Drogba – whom part of me wishes to deny the oxygen of publicity. I did see an 8 rating for him in a national newspaper and a subheading on Drogba’s ‘tour de force.’ Both offended something in me – was that just me? What I saw was a largely poor but reasonably ‘willing’ performance made embarrassing by histrionics – his logo reading Ultra Ponce rather than Superman. If I were to turn back the clock much as the blues did, I’d say he made a chump of himself. But he was, as they say, a winner.

Guardiola, however, still holds the treasure.

Contact.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

This is not all Ashley Young’s fault, this current malaise. The silky-skilled Manchester United forward is not unique in his thoroughbred cynicism, his (by Premiership standards) quietly coiffured amorality. Ashley – if he possesses the capacity to process complicated thoughts – thinks, poor love, that he’s just doing his job; skinning the full-back. So he drives for that magic line delineating the extent of the defender’s hopes. Should he breach it – and thereby enter the (effective) no tackle zone that is the penalty box, Ashley’s only thought is to win a spot kick. He’s not, some imagine, all that bothered about scoring, such is the miserly fixation seemingly automatically engaged once that limey watershed is crossed. Ashley (and nearly every other Premier League striker?) just wants to ‘draw contact,’ to win a penno, to collect the prize. And often he does.

In my view – admittedly a soulfully aromatic, moisture-affected one – this very deeply negative approach to attacking play is in itself an offence of a sort, though I admit not one that we can reasonably prosecute. Yet it’s clearly prevalent in the professional game. Top Players get near the box and their interest turns from goals to penalties – symbolically from gold to faeces. In a moment they succumb, these solid pro’s; rather than instinctively flashing past an opponent or two and gleefully, innocently, heartily smashing home, they become weirdly obsessed by the feet or body position of retreating defenders, so as to feel for a questionably dangled or interjected leg. A practice that if it was only a metaphor for the ways of the modern world might be poetically and justly resonant. However, as a fact of sporting life – even allowing for an understanding of the daftness of our ‘seriousness’ about sport – this spirit-killing reflex does matter, in both a corporeal, ie. de-mystified points-on-the-board kindofaway and an ethical sense. Because mean-spiritedness erodes joy and the expression of talent as well as helping bad guys to win.

Yesterday, in an allegedly crucial match against Aston Villa, Young claimed a penalty which set the Champions on their way. He gathered and then set; he waited and he waltzed and he drew; then he trailed a foot for contact with a defender plainly conscious of (but perhaps not entirely athletically/dexterously responsive enough to?) Ashley’s intention to throw himself. When Young either felt or was sure he was about to feel said contact some believe he launched, shamelessly, hilarious, nauseatingly, embarrassingly high and utilised that slightly rolling airborne gait he adds in for er… kicks. Or maybe for added ‘authenticity’ – the notion presumingly being that heavy contact is likely to result in dynamic distortions of a roll-about sort. And the ref pointed. Rooney, despite being fascinatingly poor for almost the entire match, notched from the twelve.

This is not all Ashley Young’s fault, this ‘debate’. But that was. In my personal revolutionary court he is guilty of a disgrace against the spirit of everything I can think of and I want to bawl at him and squirt lemon juice in his eyes. I want to demand answers and put things right immediately if not sooner… but how?

Whether or not Young actually practices what are perceived by many as his theatrical dives is a medium-interesting diversion here. I doubt that he or anyone else would do so in a public environment and shame on any club or manager or coach who actually presides over or witnesses such a rehearsal. Do we see him then safely in front of a full-length bedroom mirror, givin’-it-the-Tom-Daley’s before retiring to beddybyes? Is the length and breadth of the country sub-tectonically active Friday nights with the repeated dull thuds of similarly repellently prostrate strikers? I fear it may be, but the issue of whether the actual incidents on the telly are even provably-actually ‘dives’ is perhaps more relevant, being central to the concept of judging how and what to do as a result. For surely something has to be done about cheating in football?

Cheating is an emotive word of course. But how else are we to describe deception and manifest abuse of the spirit of the game? Hardened Pro’s might be less than moved by some woolly argument against idealised sportsmanship but even they have to concede that deception – conning the referee – is outside the laws. But because of the general low levels of honesty and respect for authority amongst players and shockingly one-eyed appreciation of issues arising from both fans and managers, the broad range of matters predicated around truthfulness, honour and sportsmanship in which this foul nugget of theatricality is set remain ungoverned. The matrix remains stolidly, amorphously powerless; an infuriatingly noisy flux. We need change.

Players and clubs must buy in to a move towards positive action but selfishness and rank myopia have typically got in the way of progress. Individuals representing clubs have generally howled about particular offences against their team rather than make any contribution to the increasingly necessary debate. Managers in particular rarely envisage anything which might generally elevate levels of sportsmanship, being far too busy calling for other, more immediately ‘relevant’ improvements, which may, incidentally advance their particular agenda or redress an injustice to their side. Plus nobody seems to want to – or have the courage to? Or be foolish and uncool enough to? – unashamedly claim the moral high ground. It’s easy enough – and right to – call for goal-line technology and use of TV reviews but more problematic, apparently, to call on the game to substantially re-negotiate aspects of broadly moral concern.

I have felt for some years that if it is necessary to implement or invent new rules to improve sportsmanship in football then so be it. If it does not work to use or extend the Ungentlemanly Conduct rule to encourage honesty or penalise dishonesty then fine; write a better law. Clearly there is a case for legislating against – for example – diabolical contempt for referees and diving or otherwise faking to gain advantage. (Etc.) Clearly something like the establishment of a small panel of informed and respected ex-players or similar charged with judging controversial incidents retrospectively might be helpful. Particularly if it was known that they had the facility to uphold spiritual early-footie-truths like respect and sporting behaviour through the application of meaningful punishments for serious transgression. If The Game had decided that other whiter-than-white lines of focus had to be drawn – lines against fraudulence and cynicism – and that players had to regard them as effective law and part of football itself then high-standard aspirations might be achievable. In short, cheats might not prosper – or would likely prosper less.

It is possible to improve things; even in footie, with its scandalous/wonderful/natural/psychotic tribalism and its capacity to crassly swamp intelligent thought. Players could be ‘caught’ whilst cheating or intending to cheat. And they could be banned… for weeks, if necessary.

Ashley Young is not to blame entirely. In fact perhaps the predictably growing outrage, the Young-gateism of this depressingly common moment speaks as loudly of us and our weaknesses as it does of him, the winner, the sinner. This is not, however, an argument for missing out on an opportunity to spring-clean the fusty cupboards of our national sport.

Liverpoolesque?

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The state of play on Merseyside is difficult to discuss dispassionately, right, given the investments we have in that very particular city? (And no, I’m not talking money.) Liverpool might instantly mean footie to many of us but just as likely music or what we might call pop culture to many others. Or soaps, or unions, or wit, or scallieness. For every individual unit of us-ness out here in non-Liverpool, there’s a ‘colourful’ Scouse something or other fit and ready to be engaged with, or seduced by… or something, it seems. Because the brand is kindof monster in terms of this little island; because that accent and those pop/otherwise arty or sparky people are extraordinarily in our consciousness. Which brings me remarkably (almost as though I planned it!) back to footie. For I am dangerously close to making some woolly argument for all that ‘You’ll never walk alone’ stuff being special.

There may be some blinkered academic at Royal Holloway College unmoved by or god forbid even ignorant of the indivisibility of ‘Walk On’ and Liverpool Football Club. (Christ. Can you imagine meeting them at a village fete, over the prize jams, laid out post-scrutiny with rosettes duly awarded? You scurrying on towards daylight, them in deep contemplation of the horto-biological origins of greengages.) But the rest of the sentient universe knows that one song is so richly of the city (now) that it represents a surging, emotive and maybe even envy-inducing peak of tribal oneness. Something full of contradictory shades of nostalgic invincibility and here-and-now, blokey pride, for sure, but frigate bird-appropriated, throat-displayingly and singingly splendid in its depiction of importantly and recognisably human and uplifting mores.

I have been in a non-scouse environment – in a village pub in West Wales – where, post Football Presentation Night ‘festivities’, that originally unremarkable song was revisited by an arm-locked circle of admittedly rather alcohol-inspired young men (and women) in a manner that chased hard upon the inspired heels of a certain “Ma hen wlad”. Which is to say that it gathered the gathered into a soul-brotherly Massive, transforming them and the moment into something (I kid you not) profoundly joined. Or perhaps more precisely it further encouraged and maybe embodied latent inclinations to share heartystuff. It was, in its chavvy but searingly honest triumphalism, possibly the single most wonderful moment of camaraderie I have ever experienced and it owed everything to a recognition of the specialness of that Kop Thing. A thing predicated on lungbursting expression of – yes! – community.

But enough about politics. There’s a Mersey derby this weekend with a fair amount on it. For Liverpool – in the red corner – there’s an opportunity to claw back some of the further slippage of the last few weeks. For Everton – The Toffeemen more often than the Blues – a chance to justify, to usurp, to thumb a nose. On form and in terms of recent team shape and unity, Everton are substantially in better fettle; being identifiably a side with purpose and some confidence. Liverpool, on the contrary, are in a mess; this does not, however, mean they are or should be viewed as underdogs.

This is partly because Liverpool are unquestionably – though not necessarily ‘deservedly’ – the bigger club. Their pull across the world dwarfs that of their uncomfortably close neighbours. King Kenny’s rather dissolute mob – is that fair? It feels it? – are light years away from competing for the Premiership, yet understood still as a world power in the game; because of all that Tommy Smith/Emlyn Hughes/Kevin Keegan/John Barnes/Kenny Dalglish/Ian Rush malarkey. That history. Of success. Which does dwarf Everton’s.

It may be important that one of few strikingly and resoundingly Liverpoolesque wins recently came against an Everton team scampering back up the table over the last three months following their own rather typically disappointing start to the season. The returning Gerard found his superman costume for the first time for about a year and that was that; 3 – 0. That the win was undeniably against the grain of the teams respective trajectories mattered little to either set of supporters. Since then David Moyles has again re-motivated his side whilst Kenny has apparently fumbled at the tiller. Everton are looking settled and strongish, with occasional bouts of instinctive team brilliance – I’m thinking in particular of those near-unplayably good chunks of their recent game at Sunderland, for starters. There they looked creative and sharp as well as aggressive in midfield and defence. The Addition of Jelavic and Drenthe and arguably Gibson plus the return of the South African prodigal Pienaar to a squad already containing Cahill, Rodwell, Fellaini etc has understandably enabled a substantial kicking on as the season has developed. Tempting for Moyles to wonder ‘What if’ all over again… but the Top Toffee has plenty to be optimistic about.

King Kenny however is in some difficulty. He needs the goodwill legacy that stills holds back much of the anxiety and almost all of the venom from amongst fans and critics alike. He has earned this good fortune more, surely, through his magnificent playing career and understanding of and role during times of real heartbreak for the club than through either of his periods of management at Anfield. His side is demonstrably and increasingly now perceived as being relatively poor – certainly unacceptably poor for a Liverpool side. Results very recently have been close to disastrous and there is – critically perhaps? – no sense that Dalglish is ‘turning things round’.

The media is relentlessly detailing the failures of several big buys. There is a seemingly interminable amount of distraction (through shambolic lack of discipline?) over various controversies which, to put it mildly, might have been handled better. I have been critical of both SAF and King Kenny in regard to much of this and regrettably have seen nothing from the Liverpool boss lately that makes me want to drift in to support him. His sullenness and ignorance – yes, I do think that’s fair – before the media and his utter blinkeredness have been frequently shameful, bad for the club and bad for the game. And I wonder at what stage if any the owners might consider telling him and his players to keep it shut even and maybe especially when they feel provoked or insulted or wronged. And I stress here that I am not responding here merely to some inelegant handling of PR issues; I think Dalglish and by implication the club have been wrong to champion Suarez and to inflame enmities when silences or blandnesses might have helped.

So I don’t rate Dalglish as either a bloke or as a manager. I find it ironic that as the figurehead for a club he clearly on the one level understands and unquestionably loves he can fail to link hands and sing the necessary… because though that song is indeed about loyalty, it’s about hope too; and hope depends upon generosity.

That football match between Everton and Liverpool Football Clubs may well be an absolute cracker. But it’s more likely to be wince-inducingly ‘physical’, frenetic and low in quality. Clatterings and bookings and only rare moments of composure or construction, fluidity. Fortunately, the rivalry sits beneath that ugly contempt ‘shared’ between United and Liverpool but it’s hardly a love-in. There is no figuring or forecasting this one because much of what occurs will be about capitulations or otherwise to moments of stress rather than expressions of form or talent even. Plus “It’s The Cup!!” Win or lose, the Diddy Men of Everton are currently the better side. But they are smaller, if you knowwharramean?

Republican Disney-Pomp, anyone?

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The scene in our house as the Masters approaches its climax is, I imagine, not hugely uncommon. A slightly worrying degree of domestic chaos; animals lying about indifferent; unnameable family members similarly either uncaring or worse to the progress of Westwood and co. Tense negotiations awaiting their moment. Sure those actual players may be ‘feeling the heat’ but back here in the real world of unwashed plates and unwalked dogs the machinations of sports-sponsored pressure are no less significant. It’s just that none of you buggers care if I get to watch the golf, or Homeland wins out.

As I write, under the quiet threat of carpet-hoiked disappointment, the Midlander Plus (likeable Lee/leaner now but still stout-as-an-oak Lee) is on his metaphorical bike. Riding with some power and cadence and authority in fact, like some Yellow Jersey hunting down the impudent breakaway through a cheering Pyrenean market town. Westwood’s pretty much tearing up the course but then forgetting to putt ; like he does, actually. Only this time – in this Major – he really is giving the impression that he might make up his current 2 shot deficit and grab a tie before storming to victory, thus liberating us all from that suspicion that he must forever remain Desperate Dan-shaped … and maybe chinned… and heroically willing but underachieving.

That’s at this second; but the rolling, non-factual, immediately nonsensed strokes ticks and crosses on that mazy line of progress billboarded so blandly but violently on the leaderboards doinked around Augusta are already providing counter-truths. Because Oosthuizen’s nerve keeps holding. Because actually Lee, you had to make eagle not birdie. Etcetera. So #nocowpie.

But I have jolted accidentally forwards(?) into something approximating proper reportage. Forgive me.

I wrote previously of the unreality of being presented in my innocence with the absurdly groomed and colored indulgence-fest that is Masters Coverage, US style; when nonchalantly turning my telly on. How that lurch into the coiffured bristles of the course felt like a challenge to taste … and to the world of Non-America/commies/women/subtlety itself. A defiance, a bulwark against (even) blokes like me, who respect the game but question its gaudy, beer-bellied conservatisms was being built, or scripted, line by NBC graphic. Proposing Augusta; symbolising Republican Disney-Pomp. But my response – that instinct to turn down the colour control – dims inevitably with absorption into the drama. Of which there has been and still is plenty.

Before we know it, almost midnight and a play-off looms. No Brits or Europeans. Weirdly, a tall dark and medium handsome American dressed head to toe in shiningly sportswear-affected glam-white will face a less image-conscious Afrikaaner. Bubba versus Oosthuizen. If we were to fall into the trap of reducing it to TV-friendly brushstrokes (and why not?) – Brash American v Dour Farmer. As we wait for the thing to re-settle for tee-shots on the 18th, we might be temporarily be further diverted along the path of psycho-cobblers if we accept the invitation to contemplate the entire Mickelson family similarly dressed in white, hugging ‘pop’ and perfectly projecting the American brand. (This could, of course be a cynical Brit-centric view of a contest suddenly denied Brits.) Oooh … good drives!

Then a fine second from Oosthuizen bettered by a brilliant arrow from Watson. But two missed putts. A hole played well to no avail. Then on the 10th, the lanky yanky leftie heaves one way left… but is followed, hypnotised by the South African, who, owing to a fortunate rebound has a direct line to the green. He can’t get there, however, falling short by some thirty yards. Bubba strikes an extraordinary and brilliant lofted, corkscrewed draw from within the pine-needled suburbs to about eight feet. Sensational… and decisive. He wins and manfully cries his heart out in enormous girlie sobs.

So, after our lot acquitted themselves with a hearty mix of serenity and style and grit – Poulter and Westwood and Garcia and Harrington and Rose amongst a clutch deserving special mention – we then get this sickeningly(?) wholesome fireside ‘interview’ in a lodge with Another Bloody American sliding into that green jacket. The presentation may indeed have been, on the credit side, one of the few occasions where The Lord failed to interject into ceremonial proceedings in North America – my god it felt he surely would! – but the trademark schmaltzy sub-religious allusions to blessed family life tripped out from the interviewer predictably enough.

Bubba however– genuinely moved by the emotion of the moment from the second his winning putt sank – seemed likeably transformed during the trip from green to homely hutch from slightly swaggeringly pristine local into proper lovely human. And given that he possesses an undeniably eccentric ‘technique’, consisting essentially of disconcertingly wild and inconsistent thrashes at the general location of the ball, we must surely both congratulate him and welcome him as one of our own.

For it turns out that I am wrong on most counts. Wrong to suspect that Westwood (around the 15th) had ‘that look about him’ – meaning that he would contradict the brutal realities of competitive sport itself by being good-but-not-extra-special(?) whilst winning something massive. Wrong to so predictably thumb my nose at the apparent clichés of American Life – because Brother Blubber Bubba is too engagingly an individual to be labelled too crassly, for one thing. And wrong to be suspicious of white stuff; I think.

No; maybe I reserve judgement on that last one.

The Osmonds? Get out of it!!

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Zapping the telly on just after the Masters has started, having heard that Tiger (as I swear I thought he might!) has twonked one way left at the first is an unusually ripening experience. In the first second or two, when eyes and screen go swiftly but abstractedly through those kaleido-rituals. When or as that weirdly velvet-green green of the Green announces itself in contrast to that sub-astro-turf green of the Fairway Margin.  And the line – the sumptuously, fulsomely High Definition laceration into the screen of life/line/interface between the bunker/non-bunker universe makes itself clear and present and more coherently impressive than any line ever ever in the history of mere lines – we know (don’t we?) that we’re in America? And then when the lame focus that is our utterly inadequate Vision actually kicks in, the landscape will seem and yup… now is seeming almost completely unreal; so much so that we may wonder what we did to deserve it. Or if it is actually there?

Georgia. For those of you who hate golf/don’t follow/are frankly in the minority that miraculously (bless you) has failed to hear some wholesomely deep made-for-American TV voice intone the phrase ‘Augusta Georgia’, that’s… unmistakably where we are. All of us together – all of us white blokes, anyway – enjoying a show on earth so great the bunkers’ teeth apparently attended out of respectful necessity the Osmond’s dentist; at heinous expense.

What IS this all about? This mania for groomed perfection? This extraordinary un-ironic top-end Americana experience, with its uber-fruitiness and fecundity-with-visors. Can we get past all that to actually enjoy some sport? Or is this like a minority view, me being some Euro-cynic smart-arse seeing only the too much mascara thing when I should just relax, get over myself and enjoy the lush beauty of it all.

Once my eyes get accustomed, I do. Because despite my discomfort with the reactionary political hinterland/gauche majesty of the Augusta experience there is proper sport to be had.

Whilst there is unavoidably an argument that this golf club needs its ample bottie smacking or even flaying publicly for its ludicrous and simply unethical ‘position’ on basic human rights (actually), the bigness and the specialness of The Masters is undeniable. Maybe it does kindof drip with everything from history to ’emotion’ in a way that sticks in our throats; maybe the US coverage epitomises something so schmaltzily alien to our post-modernist island-realism that it becomes a particularly ‘good one to win’. (Because our lot – in this case actually probably any European, or even any non-American? – can strike some poorly articulated but non-the-less fully understood blow for realness and right by going there and beating the bastards on their own patch.) BUT… the tension and the drama and the critical stretching of talent – the response with instinctive brilliance to superlative challenge – is truly there.

In fact it’s maybe particularly there, because uber-groomed or not, this hilly and hyper-scrutinised chunk of Georgia Real Estate is geared up to ask some sizeable questions of the competitors. Like, ‘How’s your nerve, dude?” for starters, water being what we might call lappingly or ploppingly present in the minds of the participants. (Fascinatingly increasingly present in the minds of those actually in the hunt for victory, it seems.)  And the fans… are they not more of a factor here, where the natural amphitheatres that are certain holes conspire to gong-bath the response to stone-dead irons or woods from home favourites? That noise does seem, for want of a better word, special.

As I conclude, a check of the scoreboard encouragingly contradicts, in the presence of one Lee Westwood, the aromatically and expressionistically-enhanced nature of my spoilt walk. (Lee being a salt-of-the-earth Yorkie.) Back in the real world, the chances of this unstarry bloke ultimately winning are, I fear, remote.

Henson.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 1 Comment

Some people you feel need to be in the spotlight. Whether they deserve it/whether it’s for reasons good bad or indifferent/whether there’s cultivation of the scene or some actually rather innocent flame and moth thing going on (often with a predictably brief lifespan and grisly result) some folks do finish up famous.

In the case of sportsmen and to a lesser extent sportswomen, increased quality brings increased exposure; not in a meritocratic way but more likely through the twisted prism of the media, contingent as it is on perceptions of celebrity and interest factored or moulded around the personality.

Apparently (and quite possibly truly) in the wider mix of Talent, there are people we really want to know about; and there are also people who really want us to know about them. Many of the more blatantly aspiring I personally want to crush slowly under my relentless heel but this may be more of a reflection of my Mark E Smith-affected contempt for shallow fame than some damning indictment of the star as an alleged individual.

Now parallel to or maybe increasingly morphing into these sporting or non-sporting Celebrity Lives is that steroid-abusingly modern phenomena, the TV Reality/Wannabe Thing, where shows typically presidentially and judgementally directed by an over-groomed media-ape spool endlessly into our living rooms. ‘Tis a feature of modern living unattractive to some of us – the consumptive force of this stuff being completely predicated on the notion that we must, surely(?) want to either eat cockroaches or sing and dance more or less compellingly to a screamingly juvenile audience in order to er… win. The implication being that life will get better if we do clamber up that Pyramid of the Disappointed on the way to this peak; this peak of fame, where we feel surely that wonders – untold wonders – await in the shape of… the shape of… what, exactly?

Money certainly. Possibly a boy or girlfriend to cherish and parade. Something… you know… better.

There once was a boy with gifts rising appropriately in step with these all-new, fascistically-materially-focused times. He had a good look; powerful thighs and that essential Action Man torso required of the Sports Celebrity Hunk. He seemed independently(?) to decide that shaving his legs and acquiring a suspiciously orange tan might be central to a successful image in this excitingly fickle era. What controlled or impelled this urge may be beyond discovery, it being characteristic of this particular athlete that things were instinctively or apparently casually and often unwisely done. His name was Gavin.

Gavin captured the hearts of many on both sides of the gender divide; the Sauvage Sweetie of South Wales, once exposed, ticking all manner of differently oriented boxes. In time the increasingly lovely and recently memorably articulate Charlotte Church fell in with him, no doubt finding comfort both in his residence (like her, with her) in this bewitchingly unreal cloud and in his stolid proto-manliness. It seemed to last; and then it didn’t. Is it now cruel to suggest she’s far too good for him, she in her Leveson-enhanced maturity?

Whatever. Gavin’s profile meanwhile back then – in rugby/for Wales/in the papers – had soared, justifiably, in the sense that now he was a real presence on the rugby pitch. He seemed at ease within the Big Match Spotlight in a way that very often indicates bonafide sporting class. For a while the most theoretically testing moments provided the place where his already slightly worrying mix of gifts and poses could actually be; where this awkward pup might most fully, apparently, be himself – or project some ‘best of himself’ onto the public consciousness.

He gave us properly fully grown-upped sporting memories; by welcoming the genuinely mercurial Matthew Tait of England (crucially) to international rugby with the kind of province-lifting tackle that altered the physical geography of both countries. By hoofing the oval ball intercontinentally distant but still with smart-weaponlike accuracy – especially, my memory suggests, when most eyes were upon him. Afficianados – often begrudgingly due to the continuing flirtations with unrugbylike arrogances or extra-curricular indulgences – conceded amidst their head-shaking appreciations that he had ‘great hands’, that he was a proper player; there was a sense that Henson was legitimate and deserving of a place within the much-admired Welsh pomp. At times he undeniably drove this pomp, such was his powerful running and subtly timed, natural offloading to colleagues in space. He played centre outstandingly now and he was a pretty complete package. But there were distractions.

Gavin was handsome and strong and already famous. He seems always to have enjoyed – either in isolation or in tandem – that fatal combination of attention and booze. When TV stuff suggested itself into his life some years ago the worry that rugby would simply not be enough began to take hold; to eat away at us (those of us who feared for a special but vulnerable talent) as well as him. He started to do more telly than sport.

He did Strictly Come Dancing, in which he showed admirable stickability in fact, for he had begun as a plodder and then hauled himself into contention. His physique proudly and arguably crassly unleashed, he ‘gave it everything’ to earn the ‘respect’ of judges and public alike; and he succeeded, actually, I think. Housewives loved him, families voted ‘Gav’, blokes – again begrudgingly I suspect – nodded quiet approval. ‘Cos Gavin had really poured himself into it. The thought now arises that it might have been good had he managed to apply the same degree of commitment and determination to the later stages of his rugby career. It seems clear that these powers existed in him, were available to him but… we all make choices.

This boy Henson, this man-cub has always been flawed. Many scoffed at the early image-consciousness; haircuts and tans and ‘inevitable’ column-friendly relationships. The apparent dumbness – if that’s what it was – the life as sensitivity by-pass. He was hard to take seriously and the unfolding ‘stories’ tended to do him no favours. The sense, on reflection, that he never actually had a grip, or that the thing wasn’t rooted. Ironically, that this magnificently powerful specimen had little power, little control. And all too quickly there was precious little sport and when there was it felt somehow fraudulent; Henson as flitting mercenary – latterly.

Sure, injury has played a role in this disappointing spiral. (I wonder, incidentally if the presumably advised but surely unnecessary bulking up of his frame contributed negatively to his later susceptibility to absences?) But it feels, does it not, like we’ve been here before, depressingly, with unnamed but familiar sporting heroes. Guys or gals who abused and then burned out their shining star. Didn’t we, in this latest episode, to be blunt, ‘all see it coming?’

That inevitability does fascinate. Is the quantative scale of our collective disappointment actually warping the percentages here? Does the fact of Gav’s exposure make it all the more thuddingly sad/infuriating/relevant to Our Times? (Delete where applicable or phone whichever extension.) Opinion itself bulges; swells; because either we’ve always viewed the man as some spoilt arse, or, more sympathetically maybe, as some attention junkie; implying the poor boy can’t help himself. I’ve seen obituaries, effectively already and I’ve seen the word ‘Shakespearian’ tagged to this latest slither of the Henson soap. After a series of more or less disgraceful exits from pretty mighty rugby clubs in the last year or so, rugby sages might feel entitled to summarily dismiss the sideshow that Henson had become; but typically they don’t. Not without a hint of a “What if…?”

Because – those of you who may not really know – Gav really was a talent; at his peak, close to the best Centre in European rugby. When he was actually there, doing it, on the pitch.

Pray for petrol?

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The things that really get our goat tell us (or otherfolks?) a lot about where we’re at as people, right? As ‘individuals’. They give stuff away. Like looking your fellow in the eye when you talk to them whilst simultaneously trying to tell the minimum amount of the truth – or an outright lie I suppose – they represent a tactical error, a cheap submission of possession. So I should probably be somewhat circumspect before blazing into some further Vinnydiatribe about well… anything. But life would be less fun, eh, if purveyors of colour and opinion such as my good self let too much restraint and consideration get in the way of a good rant? Rants can be okay – both entertaining and cleansing even – if they manouevre or lurch accidentally into the lush territory of comment; real comment, where spite and spittle and punkydelic revelation bridle against dumbstuff. So, eyes a-swivel… here goes…

Let’s start as so often with the abstract; the felt. There is a direct correlation between my feelings for and about my Outlaws (which are mixed), their adherence to the gospel according to the Daily Mail and the panic buying of petrol. And by surreal but clearly imagined extension the demonization of single mums/chavs/gays/blacks/Asians/everyone who has not the fortune to be starchily anglo-saxon with-a-little money invested, is further enwrapped, infuriatingly, into this blue-rinsed(?) bundle. Meaning the wasps’ nest that is currently and indeed typically my head responds with a kind of spontaneous fury to linkages between What The Mail Thinks – or its obvious but sometimes unsaid manifesto – and what then actually happens in the wider world. Although – forgive my anarcho-pedantry here but I am loathe to view this particular landscape as in any sense wide – it’s surely arse-clinchingly narrow but let’s move on. It is, therefore often the machinations of the sub-Middle Class Right that get my goat.

The comb-over racists; the instant coffee-slurping homophobes; the blandly bitter; the church-goingly devilish, Jammy Dodger-toting entrenched. With their silver cars and silver spoons. Their white sugar. Their propensity to sound so one-dimensionally thoughtless whilst in Twenty Eight Second Deep Political Conversation Mode that you wonder if they might implode like some un-gay fairy at the culmination of their most killing observation that everything is because “All these people are getting all these things and we’re paying ferit!” Yup; luv them.

So the panic buying of petrol – which I don’t of course entirely blame on The Mail – has troubled me. In terms of the demographic of the slavvering topper-uppers it might be interesting to see who these folks are – even who they think they are? – but sadly anthropologists are otherwise engaged in (relatively?) lucrative projects in Dubai or Cambodia, I suspect. Allegedly, much of England – you poor poor loves – has been standstilled by these decently law-abiding and Minister-attentive folk. Only a heroic few have resorted to battling on the forecourt in defence of their honour and their right to dismember the opportunity of other, less aggressively responsible souls. Should their physical condition allow it – ie. if Gaviscon/Werthers levels have been sufficiently respected, these Defenders Of The Right To Get Absolutely Mental have launched themselves from their Renault Clios in lion-hearted response to some other’s hands upon the precious nozzle. I picture them, rolling around in the blotted sands of the forecourt; legs thrashing the unleaded air, flat caps awry, brogues still immaculately tanned but twitching out, violently, the death-throes of Moral Rectitude. For the good of this great nation; for the civilised world; for Biddy Baxter and Douglas Barder and yes! David Beckham. Then dusting down and finding that bloody Tesco Clubcard.

There is no strike, incidentally. And if there was all the Great Powers know/knew that a week’s notice had to be given, begging questions about the realness of any emergency. (In fact, probably wee-weeing all over any such notions at all.) Interestingly or not, fairly compelling cases have been made for this whole farrago of clunk-clicked politically-motivated or simply inept ‘statements’ being a sharp little number from the government to help swiftly massage income up at a time when unhelpful figures might bundle economic commentators into using words like Double Dip Recession (and stuff). Conspiracy Theory or Truth? As always the twitter/internet beast seethes with contradictory passions but queues down the road have made a comparative irrelevance of such unpatriotic sideshows.

Perception is nine tenths of the law. People have been led to believe those commie lorry drivers (who spend surely too much time in French travel-stops talking to their unwashed comrades?) are about to stitch us all up; best get our retaliation in first. The top man himself has even suggested it might be prudent to stock up. The paper says The End Is Nigh – right there, on page 1, 2 and 3, next to the stuff about George Wassuname and the other Scots peril. Salmon! No – Salmond! He’s a red an all! And now he IS trying to nick our petrol!! Best strike a blow for the family, for us, by filling right up; in the blurry understanding that this might even have the double benefit of denying some treble-chinned Jock or workshy other from dribbling 5 quid’s worth into his unroadworthy Escort. Why not? I’ve paid my taxes; bet they haven’t.

If I’m cruelly extrapolating or inventing well then so be it. Personal experience leads me to believe and to fear in this way. On the one hand I ooze faith in people; on the other their herdiness, their plodding dumbness and perhaps most offensively their selfishness is, to me, galling. How dare I? Well, having during the writing of this mal-focused reflection visited out of some honestly genuine – ie. diesel-deficient necessity – a fuel emporium in Haverfordwest, only to find it bereft of that syrupy elixir, the hackles are again rising. I am transported by the vogue for rage.

So don’t talk to me about pipelines or planning or tankers or truths; get me a club. For I am preparing, raging but prudently, for the next life, where karma ensures I now know that I fetch up on some snow-blown floe, icily bank-full of purpose, marching at some doe-eyed seal pup; a particular and hypnotically engaging one; wearing a flat cap and – admittedly bizarrely – brogues.

Climate Change?

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It’s a Brit obsession we know. Because of its vagaries and its capacity to influence the otherwise pristine railways of certainty rushing magnificently towards the alleged termini of our lives. The weather. That shiny-glorious or insidiously SAD stuff that either comforts, clubs or inspires us through the winter/spring abstraction.

I say abstraction rather than say… interface because – and there’s many a post on this alone, right? – the notion of an allotted period of recognisably uniform(ish) weather gathering itself under a convenient heading juxtaposed against a different other seems suddenly rather quaint; that’s if we can use that term of a phenomenon likely reflecting the uncoupling of our worldly assumptions about water, light and …that other one? Oh yeh, CO2 (poisonous gas) concentrations.

Consequently I am bound, surely, by any understanding of what is significant, right and truly important, to write a coruscating analysis of our short-termist lunacy regarding the denudation of our magisterial globe; unless I am some kind of heartless, distracted moron? (Which I am. Sozz.) Because though I really may subject both of you sagacious readers to a treatise around and about THAT REALLY PRETTY HEAVYSTUFF again pretty soon, for now, I’m onnabout footie.

Footie it seems mysteriously de-wintered from that traditional slog through unaccommodating furrows of ankle-deep shite, wherein the undead bodies of Dave MacKay/Alan Ball/Billy Bremner as surreal examples still stand, frozen in that mix of worryingly heavy oil and chip-standing standard gravy. Viewed from that rose-tinted but manure-rich era when Menweremen and Wimminweremen, the current Premiership Stars enjoy Summer Football, do they not? In terms of the playing conditions as well as remuneration etc etc. your Silvas and your Balotellis are practically surfing a wave of Mablethorpesque good fortune. Immaculate clobber (changed at halftime,) green baize quality surfaces (finessed at half-time by squadrons of steel fork and spirit level-wielding groundstaffpersons) and crucially no wintergreen/Fiery Jack to destroy the accidentally contacted eye or scrotum. Eeeeeh. Sporting luxury.

Whether it be through Climate Change or TV-funded/stadia-improving ‘moving forward with the times’, suddenly – yes!! This week! – we have entered a summery universe wherein out there, beyond the twinkling daffs, some exhausting clamour for the Premiership line awaits. A red-blue confrontation; with knobs on; demanding/inviting a media colour-blindness to all but the Manchester truths. United – when lowest common denominated? – representing old school attackattackattackness compromised by some mediocrity and City some flashy new but often brilliant interloper into a previously unassailable 4-club scenario.

The situation has now arisen whereby the psyche of individuals – most obviously the two managers but also I suggest the clubs themselves as beings clad with individuals – is to be publically tested in an appropriately(?) HD manner. The recent and now more open spat between various figureheads marks a kicking on or in to a sharper phase; one more full of elbows/spat asides/toxicity which – as we may have seen with another north-west enmity – may not be good. Things have been ramped up, challenges accepted, more in resignation to some inevitable looming bitterness I fear than in response to some sporty, cheek-tugging mischief. The contenders have swung back to their corners and will indeed come out fighting.

Things do develop of course. It may have been inevitable that City’s rise to parity in terms of playing staff enables a ‘proper’ rivalry; whatever that means. (I hope it doesn’t mean anything like the poison between Utd and Liverpool, though this seems entirely possible.) But the relationship with the Scousers is different because Liverpool remain irrelevant to the central challenge. On derby days the Pool are a snarling relevance but ordinarily, sadly, they are simply uncompetitive in respect of the title – a real cause for concern given the acceptance that this is manifestly not a strong United side. City however, can and are competing, legitimately and consistently and on merit. Which makes for a fascinating new breed of psycho-joust.

The football may become almost incidental should the verbals transgress that line from Premier League Wind-up to raw offence; and the industry to which I am contributing now will no doubt participate fully in the ensuing spitefest. Forgive us if ye can, for innocent or not, figuring the moods and meanings of the various soundbites forthcoming will be undeniably tempting. So what gives? Firstly, with the clubs themselves.

Look United were certainly strengthened in terms of (any?) perceived moral ascendency by the latest, predictably saddening lurch in the Tevez saga. Even City fans can’t claim that the reappearance of the unattractive Argentinian because they suddenly might need him has warmed the hearts of neutrals. Ferguson is almost certainly right that would Tevez have tried that routine at United – maybe, in a sense, he did? – he would never have played for him again. In other words, the desperation of Mancini in accepting Tevez back trumps (IMHO) foulsmellingly United’s, as described by Viera, for going back doe-eyed to Scholes. (I also concur fairly wholeheartedly with Fergie’s assessment of Scholes as arguably the best Premiership midfielder for the last twenty years, so no great shame in going back for more of that controllingly ageless ginger ease.) 1, perhaps 2 nil to United.?

However City began the season in such a prolific and even stylish fashion, with David Silva the darling of most informed opinion, that any claim United may have to being the key and perennial breath of attacking fresh air is compromised. With Yaya Toure gallivanting, Balotelli coolly extraordinary and Aguerro oozing predatory class, the sky blues were outplaying the entire division for some time. Only Tottenham played with as much swash and buckle and they lacked the physical presence of Kompany and Toure Y in particular. So City deserved to be top. (Draw.)

The two gaffers could hardly be more dissimilar. Ferguson’s passionately, simultaneously distracted-but-focused mastication, pitchside, somehow being in its brittle, spearminty aggression a symbol of his legendary drive. A hair-dryer of a sort, in its acceleratedly intense way. He really is The Boss; awesomely, perhaps brutally, always and without contradiction; from and with incontrovertible experience. SAF is a contradictory amalgam of father figure, football poet and bully; he remains unhomogenised, unsweetened and unbowed by the challenge of 24 hour exposure because he is tough, tough and football wise. His spirit is defiant and he has forged his career upon a kind of oppositionism – ie. thriving on the us-against-themness of competitive sport.

Mancini is something of a heart-throb, apparently. He looks dashing and to some degree image-conscious even whilst patrolling the touchline. (Or is that some faintly xenophobic slur?) He looks and is from a new generation of well-groomed Galactico-Managers headed by the Special One. Like Mourinho he is dapper and demanding and he may be spiritually tighter, more cautious then Fergie. There are plenty of stories suggesting Mancini is hugely driven and even fierce in his own, I imagine less hairdriery way. The question may be whether he is really tough or Designer Tough?

In a sentence I think the heart of this may be that Mancini has the better squad but Fergie the greater capacity to inspire. United have United players and City have Undeniable Stars. Given that motivation and levels of confidence under (huge) pressure will tell here, both managers have a massive job on. Mancini may be smouldering convincingly in the background – he really may. And he really may have a dressing-room intent upon his every word. Things have changed – the footballing climate has changed – because of what City have done in the last eighteen months. They now have a very powerful side; one ‘well capable’. I do wonder, however, if they are as one as the Red half of the city. And whether that may tell.

During his press conference the other day, SAF seemed jaunty and alive during the exchanges about Citystuff; not that he seemed ‘dead’ prior to that. It’s just that at the mention of City… and the title… and the challenge, the juices were visibly flowing. Because for Sir Alex, at times like these, they generally do.