PERSONAL COLUMN
Soccer report
PATRICK MARNHAM
The poster outside the church hall in Liver- pool made a..bold inquiry of every passer-by. `What would you do if Christ returned to- morrow?' Beneath this a hand had scrawled: `Easy. Move St John to the left-wing.' Christ naturally, would play centre-forward.
It is with such obscure jokes that the foot- ball supporter defends his world. He is fortu- nate in • being a member of one of the few groups whose fantasies can lawfully be brought to life. Weekly, and for only 6s Od, and on a truly magnificent scale, he can act out almost any role he chooses. Lesser men on a cold Wednesday night might be lumber- ed with Mike and Bernie Winters or the Younger Generation. He has The Game. He has only to slip through the shabby streets that invariably surround the local ground and he enters a secret kingdom in the company of his private heroes.
It may seem perverse to describe' football as a private world. Since 1966 few areas of national life have been so saturated with publicity. But the essential appeal of the `game remains intimate. No other sport al- lows its followers to identify their own suc- cess and failure with that of their team so completely. The obvious excitement is the icing on top of this hidden bond. My own memories of school are still punctuated by the dismal playing record of Arsenal in the late 'fifties, Sunday after Sunday one ran for the paper, only to read that they had drawn at home or lost away. Names like Tapscott and Groves and Milton will always evoke -failure. Only Kelsey seemed to tfiumph. The finest goalkeeper in the four countries, he fought single-handed for the forces of light. He was Batman and Boy Cornwell vc. With- out him the week would not have been a de- feat, it would have been a disaster.
Very little of this can seep through the media to those who know nothing of football. Occasionally an event occurs whose general appeal is obvious even to football reporters. All over the country there are small clubs prepared to pay local men f15 to play or train two or three times a week. Once a year one of these clubs may find itself drawn against the most famous side in Europe in the FA Cup. This happened, as you may have noticed, to Yeovil Town ten days ago. For the cup-tie against Arsenal the Town sup- porters club had to close its membership list, since membership carried the right to a seat at every home match. Yeovil was suddenly plastered with posters announcing the immi- nent arrival of gifted men from the sporting press. The homely bill boards nailed to the fences around the pitch were obscured by plastic banners dedicated to I-11' Baked Beans or Goodyear Tyres.
All this has happened to Yeovil before. in 1949 they drew and defeated Sunderland. On that famous afternoon the town solicitor played his first game, in goal, and Yeovil scored through Alec Stock (now one of the best known managers in the country) and their centre-forward, Eric Bryant. Eric Bryant was a bricklayer, a big chap and as strong as a carthorse. He trained on fish and chips and meat pies. He could not play football to save his life but once he saw the ball in front of him he rolled up his sleeves and spat on his hands and charged. Nothing stopped him.
It was simply a question of whether or not the ball stayed in positio.n. He proved very effective in the thick fog which obscured the closing stages of the match. This month he travelled from Poole for the Arsenal game and was given a place of honour in the stand.
This time there was to be no fog and no Eric 'Bryant. Arsenal won comfortably.
In the days of preparation for the game there was .a delightful scene in the Yeovil dressing room. Training being complete, the team retired to the bath. Shortly afterwards there entered a line of grizzled men—no, two grizzled men, followed by two younger ones. The greybeards, naked save for skimpy towels, with large cigars in their teeth, pro- ceeded to take up position on the only duck boards in the room while they dried them- selves. The others had to stand on the cold floor. They were not members of the team at all. They were reporters training with the team, `getting a little bapkground'. Still they told some lovely stories about Danny and Alf and I, even if they did stand on the slats.
Of course football reporters are only one of the burdens which professional footballers have to bear. There are also the administra- tors and the referees. In what other occupa- tion do the men who do the work, the play- ers, have to take so much totally unqualified supervision. For years former professional footballers have been positively discouraged, in some cases even forbidden, from following a career in the upper reaches of the game. The official attitude to them is rather like a golf club's attitude to artisans. Alan Hard- aker, the secretary of the Football League, summarised it last season when he said that he would not hang a dog on the word of a professional footballer. He has nonetheless made a living out of professional footballers and he looks very prosperous on it.
Perhaps times are changing, and now that footballers are being paid more than admin- istrators they will be considered respectable enough to run the game they have played. If such a change should occur it might, as an additional bonus, protect footballers from the sort of manic journalistic abust to which they are presently subject at regular intervals. Last week's story about Bobby Moore being dropped was an example of the worst sort of football reporting, Desmond Hackett's arti- cle in the Daily ExpresA reaching a uniquely low standard. even for him. According to Mr Hackett, Moore's conduct was inexcusable, unforgivable and in danger of corrupting half the country's youth.
That sort of comment would be laughable if it were not taken seriously by so many of the Express's readers. It is on a par with the general level of match reporting, which is held in justifiable contempt by many players for its weekly inaccuracy, and lack of inter- est in the techniques of the game.
There are exceptions. The Football Writers' Association does include in its mem- bership men who have either played the game at professional or semi-professional level, or who are prepared to acquire some technical understanding before they write their reports. Privately such men will agree that the overall standards of match reporting are low. Publicly they will only stand by their professional colleagues, if it means perjuring themselves in their defence.
It is a situation which raises an old ques- tion. Who will give the press the steady scrutiny it richly deserves? Who will guard our guards?
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