How many games have
been moved since this morning?
So, here we go again.
Regular visitors of this website (if such a creature exists) may well have grown tired of
my frequent complaints about fixture changes. Well, if that’s the case, look away
now, as I’m not about to start changing this particular record. Why should I when
each season throws up new obstacles to stop people like us – anyone who regularly has
to travel to get to matches – getting to games and actively supporting our side?
The ‘fixtures’, as they laughably call
them, had been out for a whole week, so naturally it was time to start messing about with
them. So far, five matches have been moved, including three from Saturdays, and a Bank
Holiday three o’clock kick off has been lost – and that just takes us up to the
beginning of October! Just to really rub in the dominance of tv over our sport, we have
lost our opening day of the season. When everyone else is hoping to get off to a good
start on Saturday 11, dreaming their dreams of glory afresh, we will be sat at home
twiddling our thumbs, or possibly doing what non-football people do, and hanging around
B&Q. For our first game now kicks off on Sunday 12 August – at the staggeringly
stupid time of 6.15. Which is, frankly – and I feel a bad word coming on –
taking the piss. No sooner had we got our heads round that when we were told that a second
game had been moved for the telly, again to kick off at 6.15, this being the August Bank
Holiday match against Man City. Whatever next? Well, of course, we then heard that the
Bradford away match had been moved to a Sunday and the Watford home match to a Friday, but
we should have expected those anyway, as England are playing in their by now apparently
‘traditional’ Saturday afternoon slot.
None of the above four games has become any
easier to get to as a result of the changes. But that simply isn’t a factor in the
decision. The fact that all these games now present more of a challenge for the travelling
supporter is barely acknowledged. We’re expected to keep making sacrifices, keep
rearranging our lives, keep shuffling family and work commitments – and keep turning
up.
Will that be the case? There is some evidence to
the contrary. Six o’clock Sunday kicks offs are not new to this nation. They tried
them in Scotland for a couple of years. They were hated. They didn’t work. People
found that attendances fell and, it could be argued, the level of violence rose. Why
expect anything else? If people can’t physically get back from a game, they’re
not going to go. If people who do go have three hours more drinking time, they’re
going to get drunker. Not complicated. What we’re talking about is, that when games
take place on Sunday evenings, you can't get home by public transport. The last direct
train from Sheffield to London leaves while the game is still being played. If I take an
indirect route home, I might get back by midnight. Of course, the point about doing that
sort of thing on Saturdays is that you don’t have to go to work Sunday morning
feeling like shite. For further away, harder to get to games, you could be looking at an
overnight stop – and Monday mornings off work. Ditto for Thursday night kick offs
(Thursday nights indeed) and, ludicrously, Friday mornings off work.
So in Scotland, this loathed and failed
experiment has been abandoned. It didn’t work for them. Now it seems it’s our
turn for it not to work for us.
We knew this was going to happen, of course.
Wasn’t the whole big deal about getting into, and staying in, the first division, the
enhanced tv revenues on offer? This season we may realise at what a heavy price that deal
was done. We might also ponder the absence of public consultation before the deal was
signed, but when did this business ever feel the need to consult its customers? We were
prepared for disruption, but these early changes, and in particular the disappearance of
our opening day of the season, has really emphasised what has been lost.
Two things really rankle here and now. The first
is that these changes – designed to give people with nowt better to do a third Sunday
fix (imagine wasting Sunday sitting in front of the telly all day) or a game on which to
graze on the one day in the week when there’s usually no football on – are done
at the behest of an obscure tv channel that nobody watches. The games are to be shown on
ITV’s repackaged and rapidly floundering On Digital service – and on that and
nothing else. Other satellite / cable subscribers won’t see the matches. Unless
you’re one of the rare few to have an On Digital box, you can forget about it. ITV
Digital are, of course, trying to use this exclusivity in the same way that Sky have
successfully used the premier league as their battering ram: if you don’t sign up,
you’ll see nowt. I can’t say I’m convinced that the lure of us against
Sheffield Wednesday will send eager hordes stampeding to Dixons. Meanwhile, the fact is
that we’ll be inconvenienced, in some cases missing games we hoped to get to, for the
benefit of a very small number of people.
I also object to the way committed, match-going
supporters are messed around in the hope of enticing passive, stay at home fans, although
of course it is precisely that commitment which makes this possible. As in politics,
there’s no point preaching to the committed – you’ve got them; it’s
the floaters you need to grab. Decisions about the game are taken for the sake of those
not interested enough to go to games. How did it come to this?
The second thing that really got the goat –
and, I think, the thing I’m angriest about – was the club’s official
reaction to the tv changes. The cancellation of the opening Saturday was greeted with
nothing other than the proclamation that this was good news for the club, on the basis
that they make money out of it. Oh, well that's alright, then. Is anyone else starting to
get tired of the club's mercenary attitude? We know it's important that they make money,
but must they really keep going on about it? Many of the 'articles' on the highly
unsatisfactory official website consist of nothing more than exhortations to part with yet
more of our hard cash for the good of Burnley FC, tinged with something like reproach for
those who have not complied. Perhaps there's a limit to the amount of credit cards,
insurance, mobile phones and mortgages (mortgages!) people want? The club, with its
ceaseless mantra that, if it makes money, it must be good, risks coming across as
mean-spirited, and small-minded. There is a sense in which, at some point, if we want to
be a big club, we'll have to start acting like one. One of the things that we'll need is
the self-confidence not to go money grubbing so openly and so often. Perhaps when we
finally break even we'll have cleared a psychological hurdle.
As it happened, the club quickly issued a clumsy
clarification, in which they recognised the inconvenience to supporters. Thanks, finally,
but you know you're not telling your story well when you have to do that. Better to get
your message right the first time. We know the club don't have control over televised
games. It was the joyful reaction to that extra few quid spin off from news that was bad
for almost all supporters that pained us. Unfortunately, the club cocked up their apology
as well by including the line, "Indeed, it is a slight inconvenience for all of us.
All staff and directors are fans too." Pathetic. That line didn't wash in the
Teasdale days, and it won't wash now.
I don't know where it's going to end, but the
fact is that, unless you’re playing someone big or local, attendances will fall if
games are not played on Saturday afternoons. I can't see how the current mania for moving
games is going to change in a hurry, but I have a feeling that something will give as
people go to fewer games and tv saturation faces the law of diminishing returns. Declining
attendances and poor viewing figures might, perversely, be our best hope of a return to
sanity. If it carries on like this, football may, finally, be getting close to killing the
goose that keeps laying those golden eggs.
Firmo
1 July 2001
As with all articles on the site, the
views expressed in the comments section are those of the individual contributor, and do
not necessarily reflect the view of the Burnley FC London Supporters Club
