I feel I’m drowning. In a sea. Of sport. There’s just so much at the moment. Though yesterday it was rather depressing turning on the tv to find a choice between golf and tennis. Who needs that? Golf is not just boring, its grossly overpaid boring, and tennis I can’t watch unless its filmed live from SW19. Anywhere else is just rubbish. Fortunately I have a tv that has full NASA capability and is registered with data protection and can actually perform medical treatments of a very basic nature. So I finally found the ‘red button’ and there was even more choices. Loads more. Shooting things, badminton, windsurfing. I didn’t say they were particularly good choices, but certainly better than those made by the BBC for their two offerings. I opted for trampolining. Fuck me they go high. Apparently higher than a two storey house.

The problem is that all the good stuff is saved for insomniacs. Or dullards. Maybe a few early-home clubbers. You wanna see Mo win the 10k; its 3am. Jessicaaaaaaahhh, she’s on about 2, coming second in the pentathlon.

So whilst you’re waiting for that lot (as if) they brung ya back the football. It happened. Yesterday at 3, but the PM one, they started the Premiership season. Not on tv, obviously. Well, obviously to English people, decidedly lacking in obviousness for everyone else in the world. The bits where you either watch sport live in tv, or you don’t watch it at all.

Americans never got it together with this ‘recorded hi-lights’ shit. But we grew up with it. Live football was almost banned for my entire youth. All because of the failed rationale that ‘if you put it on’t telly, no-one will bother going to the games and the teams will suffer and games will be played in front of 7 people and a dog.

Football is massive. Its always been massive. West Ham just moved to a new stadium, twice the capacity of their old one and there’s a ten year waiting list for season tickets. And that’s West Ham; they’re shit. Do they really think that no-one’s going to go to Old Trafford to see United play Liverpool, just because its ‘live on tv’?

Of course, Sky changed things a bit and the ‘big game’ is allowed to be shown live on Sunday. So fans can go to church first, applying the same anachronistic illogic that prevents 3 o’clock Saturday matches being shown. And those Sunday matches seem miraculously to fill the stadia.

People go to football because its a fantastic (or fantastically violent) experience. Its an ‘event’. And its wonderful. Tv is a very poor substitute. Like Juan Mata.

Ironically, pubs are allowed to show Saturday matches live. That won’t encourage drinking then. And you can stream them yourself from Albanian sites, or Latvia or Ethi-fucking-opia, but not here. No. Is illegal. Innit.

We NEED more live football on tv. 17 matches a week is not enough for my wife. She needs more.

Show it live on Saturday. If they had, maybe Spurs would have won? Who knows.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx