Fans the real losers in era of club censorship

Developments across the water caught my eye last week, specifically some news filtering out of Newcastle and Glasgow.

No, my interest does not run to the top-class centre-halves needed by both (note: in any conversation about a club simply say they need top-class centre-half. It’s always true.

Even top-class centre-halves themselves need a top-class centre-half). No, off-field issues were my focus.

In the former city, Newcastle United’s travails with the press, in the sense of simply banning media outlets from covering the team, are pretty well known, but I only learned this week that Glasgow Rangers had banned a BBC reporter for mentioning arrests made at a Rangers game for sectarian singing, while a reporter from The Times got the same treatment for what was seen as negative reporting.

First things first: an outstanding piece by Luke Edwards of The Daily Telegraph skewered Newcastle United’s attitude to media outlets with which it does not have a commercial relationship.

He pointed out that when the new head coach, Steve McClaren, was unveiled, Newcastle only allowed him to speak to their in-house ‘journalists’ and those deemed friendly to the regime, Sky Sports and theDaily Mirror, “who have become the first national newspaper to enter into a commercial agreement with a Premier League club to obtain exclusive access”. Why? Edwards reported a club official said it was to “control and reinforce the positive messages the club wished to deliver”.

Fair enough, but Edwards’ underlying counter-argument was difficult to contradict: if sports teams and organisations aren’t covered by independent outlets, the ultimate loser is the supporter: the person who invests time, money and passion in the sport.

There can be other victims. The damage that can be done to the very fabric of a sport which is not held to account is incalculable, as cycling administrators and supporters have learned to their cost, but the man or woman who treats a sport as genuine and authentic, who takes thecompetition at face value — they’re the ones who lose most if reporting in their favourite game or pastime is compromised by commercial partnerships.

True, the eminently dislikeable Mike Ashley of Newcastle United is an easy ogre in this debate, and there are thousands of Celtic fans in Ireland who need no great incentive to dislike Rangers to begin with, but the realquestion is whether these are the outriders of a new trend or exceptions tothe general rule.

I know many of you consider the grumblings of a journalist about accessthe epitome of the term ‘first world problems’, but consider the situation outlined above, and bear in mind this is becoming a feature of Irish sports journalism also, with no great disagreement being heard about same. Would you really be happy being spoon-fed the party line? Are you content to have the message filtered according to what the organisation wants? I didn’t think so.

Acting the clown as questions fall on deaf ears

Mind you, for a glimpse of what some of those soccer clubs are dealing with, you only had to look at Cristiano Ronaldo week.

CNN Espanol released some terrific footage of the Real Madrid star storming out of an interview conducted by the channel during Real Madrid’s recent US tour. Ronaldo was there to promote a range of headphones he has launched but was instead asked about the corruption scandal currently engulfing FIFA and the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar - reasonable queries given his standing.

After spewing nonsense about his team-mates talking about women and haircuts in the dressing-room rather than, say, the men dying in their dozens building World Cup venues in Qatar, Ronaldo eventually lost his temper and walked out, his curse-words tastefully bleeped in the version I saw.

A blow to his image? You’d think so, but lo and behold, what did we see flitting across our screens last week as well? A viral video linked to thelaunch of those headphones featuring the great Portuguese player, dressed up as a homeless man, acting the clown in Madrid with a football. An image-enhancing Youtube clip which humanises the superstar, softensthe blow from his flouncing out of an interview - and sells headphones aswell?

A bonus to that creative team!

Ford epics stand the test of time

I picked up a biography of John Ford recently — entitled Print The Legend, unsurprisingly — and it certainly lives up to all expectations. A particular highlight isn’t so much learning that Ward Bond got coffee shipped to the west of Ireland during the making of The Quiet Man, such was the standard of cappuccinos in mid-50s Connacht, though the differences between the novel on which The Searchers was based and the film version were interesting. What outflanked this reader completely was just how important to Ford a different movie was — How Green Was My Valley, the Welsh mining saga. The level of detail Ford went into drove me back to the movie, which I don’t think I’d ever seen in its entirety.

The ending, a young Roddy McDowell looking for his father after the mine collapses, calling ‘Da-Da’ in the darkness, was bad enough, but the final scene, when the voiceover starts in with, ‘Men like my father cannot die...?’ I was no good for the day afterwards. John Ford still has it.

Board statement should prompt lively debate

In your columnist’s neighbourhood only one topic dominated last week’s discussions around the (metaphorical) water-cooler: the statement issued by the Cork County Board last Monday regarding the departure of Brian Cuthbert and sundry Gaelic football matters. It was easy to spot the people you bumped into on the street who wanted to discuss it: they were the ones putting their hands over their eyes before speaking.

You’re very familiar with the same statement, I’m sure, which has reached such a level of notoriety as to be circulating in places as far away as Narnia and Mordor even as we speak. Suffice to say it was unnecessary, given there had already been a brief thank-you statement issued to Cuthbert the previous week, and unwise, given, well, almost everything else in it.

Does it all end there? That’s doubtful, given there’s a county boardmeeting on August 18th, though that’s one gathering of delegates which won’t lack an agenda with all that’s happened in Cork over the last fortnight.

When the statement is mentioned, expect everyone in the hall to prick up their ears and lean forward.