Faux-centenaries

The thing is with centenaries – they only come around every 100-years. When they’re gone, they’re gone, and all you can do is sit patiently and wait for the next one (a bit like waiting for a train on the Northern Line after about 10pm on a Sunday.) Except, ever-ingenious football club marketing departments are seemingly able to dream up new reasons to celebrate/rip-off supporters at the drop of a hat.

How about celebrating our 110-year anniversary? Great idea. What about 75-years of playing in a particular stadium (despite all of the ground’s original, redeeming features being replaced by four identikit concrete stands in 1997?) Brilliant. 25-years since we appeared in the semi-finals of the Anglo-Italian cup? Let’s produce commemorative home and away kits to celebrate.

It’s getting stupid. We are all for commemorating historic events, hell, nostalgia is the oxygen we breath, but these faux-centenary celebrations just feel like a rip-off, an excuse to fleece the fans by producing cheap merchandise.

How do we stop this ridiculous debasing of genuine history? We dock points, that’s what we do. Any club caught churning out tawdry tat commemorating 20-years of winning the Milk Cup or reaching the Northern final of the Leyland DAF trophy, dock ‘em points – that, as Francis Fukuyama would say, will be the end of faux-history.

Horn of Africa, the

What is it with FIFA and fun? Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa was the vuvuzela.

No, ‘vuvuzela’ isn’t some local liquor quaffed by FIFA dignitaries in the plush air-conditioned hotels of Jo’burg. Nor is it some dangerous tropical disease. A vuvuzela is the noisy plastic trumpet blown by fans. It creates a continuous, low buzzing sound that sounds a like a cross between a burglar alarm going off in the distance and a swarm of particularly agitated mosquitos. And, for some reason, FIFA was considering banning them.

Apparently, broadcasters complained that the humming sound was confusing audiences and drowning out commentary – if you were listening to Jonathon Pearce continue to struggle with the transition from radio to television on BBC3 during the Confederations Cup, then you were probably quite grateful.

But it wasn’t just broadcasters, Spain’s midfielder Xabi Alonso was livid, he said: "I think they should be banned. They make it very difficult for the players to communicate with each other and to concentrate.” Maybe, the low humming noise was interfering with his finely-tuned, long-distance passing radar – he certainly didn’t try one of his trademark goals from inside his own half, for which we can only blame the vuvuzela.

To his credit, Sepp Blatter was feeling horny (sorry, worrying mental image alert): "It's a local sound and I don't know how it is possible to stop it," he said "It's noisy, it's energy, rhythm, music, dance, drums.” This latter part of Sepp’s quote took the mental image to a terrifying new level: Sepp with the horn, rhythmically gyrating to the Real Sounds of Africa.

Hopefully, FIFA will see sense and not kowtow to the demands of over-sensitive broadcasters. For us, it was only the constant buzz from a thousand plastic trumpets that kept us awake during the Confederations Cup. With any luck, the vuvuzela will be allowed to accompany us for the duration of the World Cup.

As Sepp said: “This is Africa. We have to adapt a little."

Rush, Stick or Scramble

The 1970s and ‘80s were littered with unlikely triumvirates: the airways were soothed by the timeless folk-harmonies of Peter, Paul, and Mary; on kids telly Rod, Jane and Freddy had their hands full keeping Zippy, George and Bungle in check on ITV’s seminal Rainbow; whilst over on BBC, Mary, Mungo and Midge was the first children’s programme to tackle the problems of urban living head-on (albeit in animated form) with Mary, her dog Mungo and pet mouse Midge routinely spending entire episodes being trapped in the lift of their high-rise tower block.

But, whilst the above were important cultural reference points for any youngster growing up in that era, none had quite the same day-to-day impact as Rush, Stick and Scramble.

Before any playground football match could get underway, the issue of ‘Rush, Stick or Scramble’ had to be resolved – it was as integral to a break-time kickabout as the ball itself. But for those of you who were either home educated (weirdos) or went to prep-school (toffs) let us explain the basic premise behind Rush, Stick or Scramble.

In the 1970s playground football stood alone, outside FIFA’s remit. As such, rules were few and games were rough. Free-kicks were unheard of, and penalties only ever used to settle a tied game at the end of break (and only then as a bit of a change from ‘next goal wins’). When setting up a game at break or lunch, speed was of the essence: at morning break you might only have ten or 15 minutes of football, so there was no hanging about. Sides were often picked during the preceeding lesson, with any stragglers being dished out accordingly. Sometimes the sides were fair, with the best players being kept apart and the crap kids being divvied out to either team. Other times, you’d get whole year groups playing against each other in a free-for-all battle for bragging rights.

If the game had few rules, it had even fewer positions. Essentially you either played up front or you went in goal. And this is where ‘Rush, Stick or Scramble’ kicks in. Once the teams were picked, you had to decide what to do about keepers. Occasionally, you found a kid who was genuinely willing to go in nets, but most of the time tact, diplomacy, bribery or plain physical violence were deployed in picking a goalie. Yet, finding a willing occupant was only part of the problem. The type of goalkeeping still had to be decided.

‘Rush’ goalie was usually deployed if the match was light on players, or the sides were unbalanced. ‘Rush’ essentially meant that the nominated keeper could play out on pitch as well. With Jimmy Glass still a twinkle in his father’s eye, the ‘rush’ goalie would regularly pop-up at the other end of the pitch and knock-in the winning goal. With hindsight – and a marginally better grasp of the rules of football – we realise that all goalies are ‘rush’ goalies, there is no restriction on keepers coming out of their area. But as 11 year-olds the distinction between ‘rush’ and ‘stick’ was important. Obviously, if you were a ‘stick’ goalie, you were bound to remain in close proximity to the piles of jumpers that formed your goal. Again, there were no area markings in playground football, so the whole notion of being a ‘stick’ goalie now seems rather arbitrary (‘stuck’ to what exactly?). The final option was perhaps the most exciting and ground-breaking: ‘scramble’ goalie essentially meant anyone could go in goal. It was disorganised chaos. Whoever was nearest the goal could legitimately use his hands to save the ball. It wasn’t popular amongst the purists, but it added to the wild-west feel of playground matches. It also added to the disputes, as three or four players on the goal-line would frantically try and scramble the ball clear with their hands – the resulting penalty appeals either fell on deaf ears or facilitated an almighty scrap.

Of course, none of this was set in stone. Matches would oscillate between ‘rush,’ ‘stick’ and ‘scramble’ in the course of a morning break. Much would depend on how the game was going. If one team was tonking the other, the winning team would have their keeper ‘stuck’ whilst the team chasing the game would be allowed ‘rush’ keeper. ‘Scramble’ would often be employed when the poor sods in goal had had enough of the inevitable abuse and gone to seek refuge with the geeky kids discussing the previous night’s Think of a Number.

We often wonder if ‘Rush, Stick and Scramble’ are still alive and well in the nation’s playgrounds? We sometimes also think that ‘proper’ football could benefit from the unpredictability of scramble keepers. For years, ‘Rush, Stick or Scramble’ has existed outside of FIFA’s jurisdiction, perhaps now it is time for Sepp to get it added to the statute books  – it might just liven things up.