“They shouldn’t have too much trouble if they’re only playing Young Boys,” said Andy Gray over a visual trail for Spurs’ mid week Champions’ League qualifier, wisely eschewing the other obvious joke about the tie as already made by everybody on the internet, and in the process marking our theme for the day: youth, and the fading of it.
A new Sky Premiership season and Andy’s feeling his age. There were already hints being dropped with his bitter World Cup ruminations- holding midfielder players and the Jabulani bearing his wrath- and when he refused to get with Ian Darke’s down with the kids lingo about Joe Hart’s ‘showreel’, referring instead to a stuffily old fashioned ‘scrapbook’, it was apparent we weren’t going to be discussing Radio 1’s weekend in Ayia Napa or the new Iphone anytime soon with our co-commentator.
Accordingly the reminiscing began- Darke and Gray taking a wistful look back to their first Monday night together, not spent at the picture house or the local disco hall, but at Maine Road watching Andy Sinton snatch QPR’s goal in a 1-1 draw. People weren’t scared to be romantic in those days. After spending the summer being reminded by Sky on how important those Monday night fixtures were for the mood and well being of the nation it felt only right and proper to spend much of the weekend bathed in nostalgia. It certainly took me back- was it only February this year I watched Wigan beat Liverpool at the DW stadium on a Monday night? March actually.
Speaking of Wigan: away from self-aggrandisement, Sky’s story of the weekend was Blackpool, comprehensive winners at the DW stadium; or rather their story was Kian Kelly, young Blackpool fan pictured after the game celebrating on his dad’s shoulders. It was a nice image, but Sky wanted more so said child and father were packed up and delivered to Blackpool’s training ground where the child, with his older brother looking on, was presented with a ticket for Saturday’s match at Arsenal. Heart warming stuff for everybody but Kian’s older brother, who looked a bit miffed at not getting a ticket himself and though one done one’s best to enjoy the joy of young Kian, one could not help but imagine the tense scene about to take place during the car journey home. Sky may consider all of this feel good fluff now, but how long such bonhomie survives in the face of several anxious calls to their publicity department regarding the possibility of securing an additional child’s ticket for Saturday’s fixture remains to be seen.
This isn’t all they’ve been talking about in Blackpool. Over on the BBC, Robbie Savage continues his very hardest to be ‘straight talking’- mistaking, in the manner famed by various Big Brother contestants over the years, obnoxiousness for ‘just being honest’- and, after one argument with an aggrieved Blackpool fan, advised the caller he could go to the pub and tell all his friends he’d slagged off Robbie Savage. Suddenly his presence on the show seemed a little less inexplicable. I had thought that (the very good) Mark Champman’s confessing to a secret liking for Craig Bellamy after hearing an interview with him on BBC had been designed as a cryptic clue as to what was being done with Savage’s public image here- a sort of remoulding of a bombastic, much loathed figure in to a loveable roughish type in the manner of a Chris Evans or a Reggie Kray. Instead, he is on board to help one of the nation’s flagging industries- if the idea is that anybody who feels inclined to criticise ‘Sav’ after hearing him on 606 should invite their friends to the local club that evening to tell them about it, then the previously moribund pub trade will soon be booming again and notices of its demise premature- unlike similar notices about 606’s.
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