Don’t Look Back into the Sun

Liverpool fans have a reputation of sticking by the club through thick and thin. Indeed, the same can be said for the club as a whole, that it is very loyal to its own. Two decades after Hillsborough, the Sun still sells extremely poorly in Liverpool as a result of an inflammatory (and fabricated) article about the conduct of the fans in the disaster and an ensuing boycott. Kenny Dalglish's conduct during the aftermath earned him a place in fans' hearts, and was a major factor in his return to the club in 2011.

This loyalty has its roots in several places. Liverpool's success in the 1970s and 80s, which saw the club lift four European Cups in eight years as well as numerous league titles, led to them being the team of choice for a generation of fans on both sides of the Irish Sea. Then there was the bunker mentality that took effect after the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, where Liverpool bore the brunt of the media and official ire. The season before Heysel was probably Liverpool's high water mark. Joe Fagan led the team to their fourth European Cup. Following the events of Heysel, Liverpool were banned from European competition indefinitely. In all likelihood, had they been allowed to compete, they would have added more European silverware to their collection.

The problem is that this event, followed by Hillsborough, contributed to a growing sense of persecution among Liverpool fans. The punishment that UEFA meted out as a result of Heysel was severe in the extreme, particularly given that the disaster was as much a product of a decrepit stadium as it was of unruly hooligans. 

Similarly, Hillsborough was an accident waiting to happen, and only the abolition of terraces has prevented a recurrence. The problem for Liverpool is that these events have engendered a profound feeling of distrust for the rest of the world among its fans.

That Liverpool have achieved great things is undeniable. The problem is that they are no longer a great club, or at least no longer genuine title contenders. Their last title win was two decades ago, and barring the odd second-place finish, they haven't threatened to repeat it since. Trophies have been few and far between, barring the 2005 Champions League which, while memorable, was far more the result of hubris on the part of AC Milan than Liverpool truly being the best team on the night. Since then, the Reds have found themselves squeezed out of the Big Four by both Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City, and despite what their diehard supporters think, they are unlikely to be playing Champions League football for the next few years.

And yet, to the consternation of both rival fans and neutral observers, Liverpool fans enter every season with the bullish confidence that they can repeat the events of 1991, simply on the basis that they did it twenty years ago. Never mind the fact that they were long ago eclipsed by Manchester United's stunning run of form, and more recently by Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City, never mind the fact that since the mid 1990s their revenues have grown at only a fraction of the rate of the other big Premiership clubs, and never mind the fact that they look set to finish sixth again this season, the assumption that Liverpool remain genuine title challengers persists among their fan base, a fan base that has never really managed to expand beyond the shores of the Irish sea.

Conversations with men in pubs can be illuminating affairs, though usually one learns more about the speaker than the subject. Two such conversations I was involved in recently seem to me to highlight the mentality of Liverpool. The first was with a non-Liverpool fan who, when I suggested that a spell of mid-table mediocrity might lower Liverpool's expectations to a more manageable level, retorted that they were now so detached from reality that relegation might not affect their expectation. The second was with a Liverpool fan who asserted that, given the amount of times they have struck the woodwork this year, the team's goal difference should by rights be at least twenty goals better than it is. It is entirely possible that Liverpool might have had more narrow misses than most teams this year, but to suggest that this is having a major effect on the course of the league is laughable in the extreme, and serves to demonstrate the dislocation from reality that some fans experience.

The above 800 or so words is a rather elongated introduction to the main point of this article, namely Liverpool's abject mishandling of the recent controversy surrounding star striker Luis Suarez. The whole lamentable business is best viewed as another manifestation of the "us against the world" mentality that pervades Liverpool. Clubs, to a degree, have a duty to stand behind their players. In the days before professional football was one of the most lucrative careers on the planet, the club itself mattered more than the money. Liverpool, with its reputation of fierce loyalty to players, became correspondingly a good team to play for. In this respect, the decision of the team to back Suarez is understandable.

The problem is that Liverpool have now taken this far beyond the bounds of reason. In signing Suarez they knew there would be a lot of baggage. Gifted and all that he is, Suarez is also responsible for two of the worst fouls of modern times, the first being his intentional handball against Ghana in the quarters of the 2010 World Cup which cost them a place in the semis, the second being when he bit the shoulder of PSV player Otman Bakkal while playing for Ajax. The fact is that he has demonstrated a winning-above-all-else mentality that has led to a number of regrettable incidents.

Racism is unfortunately widespread in football. Granted, much of it is simply a form of gamesmanship rather than any genuine ill-feeling. The problem is what constitutes an insult depends on who it is said to, and how they take it. In the Liverpool-Manchester United game that kicked off this whole mess, the likelihood is that Suarez was trying to unnerve Patrice Evra to gain an advantage. However, that's not how Evra saw it, and a complaint of racial abuse was sent to the FA.

It was at this point that Liverpool made their first big miscalculation. A swift apology and an internal disciplining of Suarez would have gone a long way to salving things. Instead, the club decided to focus their defence on impugning the character of Evra, who admittedly has had a dubious history himself and only a nodding acquaintance with honesty. As a defence, everything hinged on Suarez sounding more credible than Evra.

A number of problems are apparent with hindsight, and Liverpool should have seen them beforehand. Firstly, Evra's complaint had merit. Suarez even admitted to using the word "negro", though denied that it was intended to be pejorative. The second issue was that if the tribunal upheld Evra's complaint, then they would punish Suarez all the harsher for attempting to deceive them. In the event, that's exactly what happened.

The FA made one mistake in the affair. By failing to release the full report at the same time as handing down the eight-match ban Suarez received, they allowed Liverpool fans' imaginations to run wild. Had the report come out, the punishment would have looked more justified and a lot of difficulty would have been avoided.

It was at this point that the two aforementioned Liverpool traits, namely the sense of loyalty to their players and the perception of a hostile world came to the fore. Liverpool could still have walked away from the whole sorry affair and grudgingly accepted Suarez's suspension (In the event, that's what they later did, but by then it was too late). They had gambled that Evra's testimony could successfully be denied, and it had failed. Luis Suarez had received an admittedly hefty ban, but the whole affair could have been let go.

Instead Liverpool did something absurd. They rejected the finding out of hand, questioned why the report wasn't released, and stood full square behind Suarez. The problem is that, in the eyes of many, standing behind the man is also standing behind the deed, and Liverpool were implicitly condoning Suarez's acts. This culminated in the team wearing T-shirts with Suarez's photo on it before a game against Wigan. Meanwhile, the club were waging a propaganda campaign against the FA, insisting the whole thing was a stitch-up and that their player was the victim of a witch hunt. At this point, the club had moved beyond supporting a player to a) implicitly defending racism, and b) attacking the moral integrity of the FA.

Of course, when the report came out, it was clear that Suarez's testimony simply had no credibility. Even his teammates had delivered inconsistent statements. Evra, on the other hand, stuck to his story, and the independent commission accepted his claims over those of Suarez. It appears that sometime in the previous week Liverpool realised they were out on a limb, and they sensibly declined to appeal, but the damage has now been done.

As a result of Heysel, Liverpool have since had that unpleasant tinge of hooliganism about them. In reality, their fans are probably no more racist than those of any other Premiership team, but perception is what counts, and Liverpool have created a perception of being a club that's soft on racism. Already, there is increased focus on racial issues involving the club. In a subsequent match against Oldham, a fan was arrested in connection with racially abusing Tom Adeyemi, an Oldham youngster of Nigerian extraction. No doubt every such incident in the near future will attract more media attention than Liverpool would like.

A more worrying aspect is the extent to which this insularity pervades the club. The decision to wear T-shirts in support of Suarez was not the act of a single individual. It had to have been signed off on at multiple levels, and at no point does anyone seem to have thought how inflammatory it was, or how the FA might react to having its decisions questioned so publicly. Clearly, the culture in the Liverpool is dangerously introverted.

This introversion has two negative consequences. Firstly, it creates a tendency to blame all the club's issues on external factors, rather than any internal failings. Even internal failings, most recently the debacle of the Hicks/Gillette ownership, are turned into external, by characterising the American owners as outsiders. The fact that they sold out to another set of Americans is, of course, not a problem, at least until there are any issues with them, at which point they will no doubt become outsiders again.

Secondly, it blinds the club to events beyond Anfield. This whole unfortunate business has left Liverpool looking like a group of sulking children. Having played every card wrongly, and persisting in denying any liability, they then backed out of an appeal, presumably because anyone with a modicum of common sense knew that the FA was hardly likely to be better disposed to them after weeks of impugning their judgement. That animosity is not going to go away. Barring heroic efforts on the part of Liverpool, the FA Cup Fourth Round match between Manchester United and Liverpool is going to be a charged affair. Should he play, Patrice Evra is going to come in for a lot of abuse, some of it no doubt racial in nature. And, to make matters worse, the eyes of the world will be watching. Then, to make matters worse, when Luis Suarez finishes his ban, he will be playing United in the league. Once again, expect an explosive situation. Liverpool have only days to make sure that their fans don't exacerbate it.

Liverpool have had a great history. However, in order to have a better future, the team, the management, and the fans have to recognise that this is in the past. The sad reality is that, as of now, they haven't.

Post by Greg Bowler

Kicking for my supper

Is darts a sport? Can a middle age man carrying a bit of weight like say Darren Clarke, really be classed as an elite athlete? When does a baseball "slugger" like Prince Fielder become too "big" to play the game? For some reason we, as sports fans, are fascinated by players who don't break sweat in the course of playing their sport. Why then does the American Football kicker not come in for more scrutiny? Essentially these guys come on for less then 20 seconds at a time, leather the ball as hard as they can and stroll back to the bench. Short of ordering a hot dog and a Bud Light, these guys are mere spectators to the real event. Except their efficiency is often critical. In the NFL, the field goal kicker often comes off the bench with 2 seconds to go where the success of their kick determines who wins the match. Recently the Dallas Cowboys kicker missed a kick with one second remaining against the New York Giants. Fast forward a month and its the Giants, not the Cowboys, who've reached the playoffs. A friend, who has played as a goal-keeper at Inter-county level, summed it up perfectly by saying "that sounds just perfect for me. Sit on my arse for two hours before coming on for two seconds, kicking the winning points and being made a hero". In a nutshell he is right. Thus an attention seeker like myself was naturally drawn to this position - where the chance to win hero status is very often only 45 yards away.

 

Undeterred by my lack of skill, knowledge or otherwise physical incompatibility I confidently assured the head coach of the minor league, New Jersey Spartans, that I could punt the ball 60 yards. The reaction of Coach Moss makes me think that I may have massively over stated my capabilities because next thing I know I'm being asked to try-outs. Here was my logic; at another time I'd convinced myself I could play Aussie Rules. So after similarily bullshitting my way onto the University Blacks Third Team I actually played half the regular season and a couple of post season games. At training I was able - abetted by a strong breeze - to punt the ball 45 yards. Using this as a standerd bear, I decided that with a lighter ball I could manage 55. Accounting for the adage to never let the truth get in the way of a good story I went for 60 yards. On a brisk morning in early December we were about to find out just how economical with the truth I'd been.

In Amercian Football there are two kicking positions, punter and kicker. The punter returns the ball on a 4th down when the team is too far away to attempt a field goal. His job is essentially to langer the ball as far down field as he can so that the opposing team don't get the ball anywhere near your goal. The kicker comes in when your team are in a position to kick a field goal (3 points) or to take the conversions after a touchdown (1 point). At NFL level these two roles are divided between two players but with the Spartans the same player is required to do both. About 30 players had arrived to try out for the team (I'll get into the structure of the team at another time). The battery of tests of simple, a 40 yard dash, an agility drill and then onto position specific drills before looking at our mental toughness. Essentially Coach Moss didn't care about my 40 time or whether I'd the turning circle of a bus. All he wanted to see was my boot. 

The trial began with punting. Initially I used the Australian Rules drop-punt, essentially kicking opposite the lacing before moving onto the American football style where you hold the ball flat out in front of you and kick the belly. This makes the ball go much higher and further although you massively concede on control and direction. Despite my boast of 60 yards, I could kick it 50 yards, which was respectable but in the words of Head Coach Moss "fairly unimpressive". Next we went to kicking field goals, a technique at which I've no experience (this is when you kick it off the ground a la a rugby out-half). I've never had the bottle to play rugby and anybody who's seen me attempt a '45 in GAA will testify that I can get no length in my kicks. However I can nail corner kicks with a lighter soccer ball so I think I strike a ball quite cleanly.

After successful attempts at the 10, 20 and 30 yard line they lined me up at the 35 (in a strange scenario that essentially sums up the quirks of American Football , this equates to a 42 yard field goal). When I pinged that over, a crowd started to gather. I'd seen this range be missed by NFL players so figured I was doing something right.. 40 yards was slightly out of my range for now but I'd done enough to justify a spot on the 2012 roster. Throughout the season I'll blog on my experiences - both cultural and sporting - and try and give you an insight into what sort of commitment it takes. Now where is the hotdog stand and can somebody please give me a light?!

Massive thanks to Tom Mellaci for putting the videos together!

You can follow Seamus on twitter @fbspecial

Counting the Cost

Sport is a young man's game, and at a metaphorical level, so is the hosting of sports tournaments. Developed countries rarely derive much benefit from hosting a World Cup or Olympics. Consider the fact that London already boasts lots of large stadia. Is there any real reason to say that it needs an 80,000 seater athletics facility? With the exception of the Olympics (which we can assume London won't host again for many years, and indeed if they do so again it may require a new built facility), there is no athletics event that draws remotely that amount.

As the scale of the Big Two sports events has grown, so too has the cost of hosting them. Beijing 2008 cost anything up to forty billion dollars. While London won't clock in anywhere near this amount (it will probably top out around ten billion), the figures mask the fact that Beijing gained a lot of much-needed infrastructure from that figure. Facilities such as Beijing Capital Airport's Terminal 3 were necessary before the Olympics anyway, to deal with exploding air travel. In a similar vein, the massive investments in road and rail for Beijing were working up from a very low base, and will pay dividends in the future. London's infrastructure (with the exception of a new terminal in Heathrow, which probably won't be completed on time anyway) hasn't been built specifically for the Games. Almost all of London's money will go on the event or the stadia.

More ominously, the Olympics may actually harm grassroots sport in Britain, which is in a poor enough state as it is. In order to defuse concern's about the rising costs, the previous government suggested that money may be diverted to the Olympics from the general sports budget. That money was earmarked for other projects, all of which will now suffer so as to built what is essentially a one shot complex. With austerity the order of the day, and the Games money ringfenced, it leaves other sporting investments even more vulnerable to trimming.

Across the world, the spiralling costs of hosting a sports tournament is becoming a problem, particularly as the growing number of attendees require facilities to be designed for far more spectators than they will ever see again. For the 2010 World Cup, South Africa constructed stadia with copious amounts of temporary seating, which made for easy downsizing when the events are over. Only a handful of countries have the existing infrastructure to host a World Cup, and those who build for it are increasingly finding they have a lot of white elephants on their hands afterwards. Qatar's promise to dismantle their facilities and ship them to the Third World after 2022 may be extremely difficult to put into practice (and may indeed have been a bribe for poor countries to vote for them) but it was at least an innovative attempt to deal with the legacy of a sports tournament.

Very few countries have managed to capitalise on the legacy of an Olympics. Athletics simply isn't a big enough draw, and the things that are (football, NFL, rugby, etc) generally find playing on a pitch with a running track around it to be a bit of a nuisance, and the backroom facilities aren't easily interchangeable. Hence Tottenham Hotspur's plan, in the event of getting it, to level the Olympic Stadium and rebuild it as a football stadium after the Games, and make a token investment in athletics elsewhere.

Should one find themselves in Seoul or Munich, a tour of the Olympic villages is a worthy endeavour. Except that there are no organised tours. The main stadia lie semi-derelict and are technically not open to the public (though easy enough to access). One would think that Munich, given both its notoriety and the fact that Germans rarely waste anything, might merit at least a museum, but this is sadly not the case. As of my last visit there, the stadium was a construction site, former tenants Bayen Munich having abandoned it for the newer Allianz stadium on the other side of the city. Seoul, despite being barely two decades old, is little better than a shell. The state of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the only stadium to have hosted the Games twice, is often cited as the primary reason LA lacks an NFL team, despite being the second-biggest market in the USA. During the summer, the city government decided to build a new stadium at Farmer's Field, with the intention of luring an NFL team there. The Coliseum will be relegated to the occasional concert.

What, then, of the invisible benefits? Surely the influx of tourists, sponsors and the increased profile of the host city count for something. The problem with this argument is that it works better for developing countries. Prior to the Olympics, Beijing was probably not top of anyone's list for travel destinations, and the Games undoubtedly gave it a much better profile in the tourist industry. The problem is that London already draws more tourists than any other city on the planet. Alongside New York, it is the world's leading financial centre, and with New York and Tokyo would be considered the three Tier One cities on the planet. Already home to five Premiership clubs and two of the world's most famous cricket grounds, London doesn't exactly need to increase its global profile in sport. Nor is it going to attract a lot of additional tourists, beyond the direct fillip of the Games.

Conversely, had England actually managed to get the 2018 World Cup, it could have been done on a relative shoestring. All the stadia, bar one in Bristol, would have been in place, and only minor expansion work would have been necessary to a few venues. As a compact enough country with excellent infrastructure, the whole operation would probably have been cheaper than the Olympics. Compare this with Russia, which will have to invest vast amounts on stadia, to say nothing of the improvements needed for crumbling Soviet infrastructure, or Brazil, which nearly has to start from the beginning. The difference is that the facilities built for the World Cups in 2014 and 2018 and the 2016 would have been necessary anyway, as both the economies and football leagues in Brazil and Russia continue to expand.

The sad reality is that London's Olympic bid was essentially a costly product of vanity and hubris. In 2005, the illusory growth that the property bubble brought was assumed to be a fact of life, and there was money for all manner of nonsensical products. The problem is that, like the growth, the money was an illusion, and now the British government is committed to a very expensive project for which they have no plans of using as a long term asset.

Oddly enough, one country that is both a cautionary tale and a good example of what to do right is Greece. Few things encapsulated the hubris of the Greeks in the past two decades more than bidding to host the 2004 Games. The cost was beyond what the country could afford, though the advent of cheap euro interest rates and cooking the books masked this. Now, the Greek government, on the verge of default, is still legally obliged to shell out half a billion euro a year on maintaining the facilities. The spectacularly luxurious airport built for the Games operates on less than half capacity, and the municipal light rail service has become a black hole into which money disappears. As vanity projects go, the Olympics can be rather costly, and future hosts should take note.

Post by Greg Bowler. 

My Eight Strikes -The Whip Debate

Background

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) introduced new rules on whip use in both Flat and National Hunt horseracing back on the tenth of October.  7 strikes for the duration of a flat race and 8 for a jumps; stipulating a maximum of only 5 inside the final furlong or after the final obstacle for respective codes. This nearly halved the whip use allowance. The BHA also introduced stiff penalties with jockeys breaking the rules losing their riding fee and a substantial percentage of their prize-money.   

1 The Initial Perception Problem

Perception amongst the public was singled out as the main reason for the changes. Herein lies the crux of the problem for me. I don’t believe there was a problem with the perception of the sport. One could argue things have never been better in terms of decent attendances and a golden era for thoroughbreds, poor prize-money and funding aside.  It seems as if the BHA were worried about those who may never like horseracing, no matter how much educating, pleasing or pandering. You won’t change them. Some of these people would have the sport banned not to mind the whip if they had their way. I’ve heard the rugby and soccer analogy used, certain fans of one just cannot find enjoyment in the other. Sean Boyce makes my case a little more eloquently

 http://boyciesblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/nailing-the-something-had-to-be-done-myth/

Some speculate that the Grand National was the catalyst of the Horseracing authority feeling they had to react. Again I cannot understand why. Jason Maguire’s aggressive use of the air foam cushioned whip had people outraged apparently. 8 million people watched the National on the BBC, out of which 8 people complained of the whip use on the winner. More complained about Clare Balding’s poor humour post-race with 2010 winning jockey Liam Treadwell, commenting on his teeth, saying how he could now afford a new set!  The 2011 GN was a strange day, unseasonably warm, with some horses finishing very tired. A combination of connections showering their horses with buckets of water to cool them down and a stricken horse covered by the cameras for all to see left a bad taste. The whip was merely something for some to vent frustration at the race not being its usual brilliant spectacle.    

The Great Revolving Door

The past two weeks have been a hectic time for the Irish boys in the AFL but the groundwork for this transformation has been made in the pipeline for some time now. To be quite frank, the interest in the Irish "experiment" peaked in those hazy days when I was giving Ricky Nixon disguises so that we wouldn't get attacked as we walked down Tralee Main Street. To explain the transformation I think it’s important to go back to the start of this cycle.


In 1987 Jim Stynes was brought to Australia by the Melbourne Demons and their far seeing coach Ron Baresi. He appreciated that Gaelic Footballers were natural bedfellows of Aussie Rules and that certain players could prosper in the game. After his success - Stynes went on to win the Brownlow (Player of the Year Award) - there was a rush to recruit Irish players. Alas Anthony Tohill, Brian Stynes, Colin Corkery and others came and failed. Thinking the talent had dried up, AFL clubs deserted the Emerald Isle. That was until a certain Tadgh Kennelly burst onto the scene.


I don't know how it happened but the Sydney Swans took the brave decision to go against the grain and recruit an Irish player. This turned out to be one of the best decisions in the club history, as Kennellys strong run and carry propelled the Swans to the 2005 Premiership. His performances encouraged all the other clubs to dust down their passports and travel to Ireland in the hope of finding the next Kennelly much like clubs in the early nineties tried to find the next Stynes. Herein lies the crux of the problem - there is no next Stynes or Kennelly, these guys are superstars of the game and to think that every GAA player is as good as these two is unrealistic.