SPECTATOR SPORT
The two deadly sins
Frank Keating
THE HULLABALOO surrounding David Gower's omission from the England cricket team would suggest to any of you who sel- dom so much as glance at the back pages from one year to the next that cricket is being run by doltishly vengeful and self- seeking nincompoops. This is nonsense. As any English soccer lover will tell you, it is their beloved game which is being ran- sacked and pillaged by that aforesaid group of fellows. To be sure, the way things are going I have not met one soccer supporter who would not — with shining relief and thankful chants of Te Deum and Non Nobis — hand over the administration of their sport to the Test & County Cricket Board, the MCC, or even the Buckingham Palace press office.
The past month has seen the birth of the much vaunted English Premier League. So far it has been an unmitigated disaster.
When English soccer's leading clubs announced their divorce from the old established and rickety Football League a year ago, a preening Arsenal 'suit' called David Dein announced the gleaming future: 'The evolution and management of the game have been in neutral for the last 100 years, but today's decision has taken off the brakes and sent us into overdrive, which should reward all clubs, large or small.'
Some hope. Having been on the road for only five weeks, the Premier League has done no more than ricochet off brick walls like a crazed dodgem-car, scattering crucial nuts and bolts and big-ends at every winc- ing collision. Even the steering-wheel is nowhere to be seen any more, as the vari- ous cabals of the 22 club chairmen scram- ble and fight in an effort to grab it and change direction.
The Premier League was founded on jealousy and greed. After five weeks, it is already foundering on the same two sins. Both, as the good book says, are deadly.
The only pleasure to be gained so far by the despairing 'ordinary' and unbiased foot- ball fan is that (as of Monday morning any- way) of the eight self-perceived leading clubs who first perpetrated the breakaway, only one of them — Manchester United is placed in the top eight of the league table. To much glee, all the running so far has been made by such presumed cannon- fodder Cinderellas as Norwich City, Black- burn Rovers, Ipswich Town, QPR, Coven- try City and Middlesborough.
Even Manchester United's steady enough start has been, by all accounts, pret- ty uninspiring, what we hacks droningly label as 'workmanlike in the midfield and tight at the back'. Rather like the glumly taciturn Scot, Alex Ferguson, who manages them. Still, as I say, you have to grab and relish any opportunity for a laugh in soccer these daft and dismal days.
Like the letter the Guardian printed last week — a postcard from a Mr Alan Fraser in Menorca, reporting a conversation he overheard at a local news-stand between two holidaymakers: 'Oh good, the English papers. What's happened with Fergie's tits?' 'A bit better. They beat Notts Forest 2- nil.'
The Premier League's teething pains have been so excruciating to the game as a whole and the turnstile fan in particular exorbitant ticket prices, fixture-list hop- scotch, endless mediocre live television that even after such a short time a total rethink is necessary. You can be assured that the most greedy are already thinking.
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