LARRY RYAN: Controvassy in a world gone mad
The word is there were no ballboys at Anfield because Shanks felt ballboys made footballers lazy.
As the Book of Proverbs warns us; laziness is a shortcut to ruin. “One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.”
In other words, the day will inevitably come when a heavy toll must be repaid for all that back-breaking ball retrieval work you skipped. And when that hour dawns, probably with time running out in a cup-tie of moderate importance, you will find your blood boiling and you will root and tear at a smirking young scamp at your feet.
Ah, he knew the price of everything alright, did Shanks.
He would have shaken his head from beyond the grave in 1984, if he could stomach watching England from that vantage point, when he heard Ray Wilkins roar ‘Gimme that facking ball’ at a sluggish Chilean ballboy in a languorous 0-0 draw in Santiago – a sneak preview of the red mist that would cost Butch two summers later in Mexico, when he couldn’t muster the effort to confront a referee with his gripes, so chucked a ball at him from distance.
Perhaps now, lessons will be belatedly learned after another remarkable week for our old friend controvassy.
There was once a time when the English knew no greater excitement than the prospect of ‘an upset’.
A week like this would have truly exhilarated them – two giants slain. But now the cursed addiction that grips them takes priority over all else. All that will get them through the night — is controvassy.
They know themselves. They know. So when the fella on Sky Sports News had finished with the usual suspects – the controvassy consultants like Dermot Gallagher and Gordon Taylor and Kerry Dixon – and then when he had finished scratching around in left field, interviewing a former ballboy about the rights and wrongs of delayed ball retrieval and consequent indiscriminate rucking; when he had finished with all of that, he said: “The controvassy shouldn’t overshadow a historic night…”
And he was a little bit ashamed. Yet you could tell he had never felt more alive.
We have to be careful, in fairness, not to gauge the state of mind of a people by what happens on Sky Sports News. If he wasn’t tucking gluttonously into this Belgian trifle, our correspondent would be prodding a giant tablet and hyperventilating slightly as he broke news that Bursaspor may be preparing a bid for Anton Ferdinand. Not bidding, you understand, preparing a bid – seeing if there’s enough fax paper.
So we must remember who we are dealing with. But still, there’s no escaping the emphatic empirical evidence. By now, theatrical manchild Charlie Morgan has accumulated more Twitter followers than theatrical manchild Sugar Ray Leonard. After a single drop to the canvas. The people have spoken and controvassy is what they want.
Of course young Charlie also went, in a trice, from defenceless child to scheming, cheating, cider-swilling, hustling rich-kid. Even though – by the standards set by Hazard himself – he had earned the right to go down.
But hey, there are no trump hands when controvassy is dealing.
Pat Nevin, ordinarily a cool customer, flew into a rage on the BBC, a fury only a former winger, who would have dealt closely with these young pups, could muster. It was, reckoned Pat, time to ban ballboys, to throw the babies out with the bathwater.
And maybe we should have listened years ago, if not to Shanks, to writer and Watford fan Olly Wicken.
Contributing to the fine book My Favourite Year about the 1974-’75 season, which he spent as a ballboy at Vicarage Road, Olly explained why he ran up and down the touchline during matches to keep up with play.
“I guess I felt so much a part of the club, so unswervingly a servant of the cause, that I matched my emotional commitment with physical commitment. It certainly added to the satisfaction of another home win when I came off the field physically as well as emotionally drained.
“But then maybe I was just an over-keen little prat.”
No wonder Shanks steered clear, but how thankful must another former Liverpool gaffer be for the diversion of this week’s pratfall?
Naturally, the matter was, first and foremost, a source of supreme indifference. But they wear you down, the egg-chasers, with their unrelenting seriousness about this kind of thing.
So you eventually hear them out, with one ear anyway. They offload.
It appears they want bonus points in the Six Nations. At least some of them do.
And if they want bonus points, they can have bonus points, as far as I’m concerned. But when you hear them fretting about the integrity of the competition, it is at that stage that you cannot let any more of the guff go unremarked upon.
As far as I can tell — in truth, I wasn’t up all night finding out — integrity is in short supply through just about every competition the Ugly Game organises. Laughably, the Six Nations features three home ties for some contenders, two for others. The championship may be decided on points difference, yet final round fixtures don’t kick off at the same time.
At the World Cup, the minnows are made play every hour ROG sends, while the giants idle through a holiday schedule. And then, last week, you had Munster, in indirect competition with rivals who had played in the dark the day before, knowing exactly what their task was to ensure progression in the Heineken Cup.
Even football, television’s most loyal and obedient servant, has long ago accepted that revenue must, on occasion, be sacrificed for fairness. Coming to terms with that much might be the first bonus rugby should target.
Another intriguing week in the mixed-up world of football punditry. First, signs that Gary Neville — who has so far provided a masterful impression of a sane and reasonable man — might be close to jumping the shark.
On Sunday, there was a moment when he criticised Clint Dempsey for attempting to score rather than collapse under a weak penalty-box challenge. It was a moment where a man was saying bold things to draw attention to himself. To be fair, Gary knew it too, almost immediately, and sort of retracted. But it was a sign.
And then he was at it again on the Monday Night Football, with his much-discussed criticism of David de Gea. There was no problem with the actual criticism of de Gea, whose flap had clipped United’s wings. But Neville’s insistence that the lingering stares of various United defenders were proof of a culture of accountability at Old Trafford rather smacked of a man putting himself under pressure to provide profundity at every turn.
That is not an accusation anyone has levelled at banter’s Colin Murray. This week, we learned that Murray will soon be gone from MOTD2, having seemingly upset the punditry relics with his irreverence.
It’s those relics who Neville should now be putting pressure on, not himself.
The Brazilian provided a magnificently frank defence of his move to Saudi Arabian side Al Ahly. “I am going to be well, my mother is going to be well and that is the most important thing. It will be a much more tranquil life financially, but sportswise it will distance me from my objectives.”
: Finally starting to provide the kind of soundbites about Lance Armstrong the sport needed to hear.
To echo Paul Merson, has Lendl given him unbelievable belief?
Lingering at the crease like a cornerboy. No more than you’d expect.
Seems the new Ryan Giggs showed for his United medical wearing an Imogen Thomas t-shirt. Where do you start?
