And so the whole tawdry freak show rolls into town once again – with its usual cast of phone-in drones, emotionally incontinent blatherers, and the odd genius.
It’s still the height of summer, but that doesn’t stop the world’s most popular sport from muscling its way mercilessly back into the nation’s consciousness. League football is back this weekend, and frankly, the implications are a little frightful.
For the next ten months, those of us who follow football will be treated to the wit and wisdom of the likes of the Mr Toad of the airwaves Alan Green, crisp salesman extraordinaire Gary Lineker, John Prescott lookalike ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce, Harry Redknapp, Talksport’s Stan Collymore, Richard Keys and Andy Gray, the BBC’s ever-excitable Jonathan Pearce, self-proclaimed Fascist Paolo do Canio and many more. What a wonderful prospect.
The only consolation for humanity is that Stuart Hall is currently detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. I make no comment on his plight, other than to breathe a giant sight of relief that Sports Report listeners will no longer have to endure his self-satisfied chortlings from Wigan, Everton, Preston or some other bleak Northern citadel.
Joking aside – and it is simply impossible not to laugh at so many in the football world – there’s a parallel sadness which greets the dawning of yet another season of the so-called glory game, and it has little do with the inevitable sense that the year is once again on the turn and the leaves will soon be falling.
I speak with the mindset of a football obsessive, hopelessly addicted for half a century to this global phenomenon. But there’s a limit to every addiction, as any chronic alcoholic will recognise.
Football long ago ceased to be the glory game, after selling its soul to Mr Murdoch and a few other TV moguls.
And as for the so-called working-man’s sport, try buying a couple of Premier League tickets on a working man’s wages.
My only consolation is that county cricket still has nearly two months to run before the footballing juggernaut takes over entirely. Thank Heaven for Trent Bridge.
