Media hypocrites round on John Terry

The level of hypocrisy that surrounds the moral storm swirling over John Terry’s head has reached an all time high. When the minister for sport Gerry Sutcliffe called for Terry’s removal as England captain one had to blink twice at the sheer audacity of an MP lecturing a footballer about morality.

It has got nothing to do with his ability to lead England at the World Cup in South Africa but according to Sutcliffe he needs to lead by example. MPs show everyone how to behave by acting with such impropriety, it makes your eyes water. The expenses scandal of last year which exposed a huge swathe of ridiculous and unjustifiable claims is not exactly a model of how to run a clean and fair democratic system.

Then of course we have those fine upholders of truth and decency the newspapers who have hounded Terry over his obligation to resign after this dastardly and despicable act. It is a truth universally acknowledged that not one brave reporter or fine, upstanding newspaper executive has ever cheated on his wife. And then there was Gary Lineker making snide comments on Match of The Day about Terry “playing away” when his own fidelity record is not exactly pure as the driven snow.

These boys know how to conduct themselves alright and that Terry is a cad. Indeed they are so convinced of the moral high ground that they have been waving hundreds of thousands of pounds to get his mistress to tell the unvarnished truth. Thank God for the fearless journalists who are so nobly bringing the truth to a front page near you.

Nobody can defend the central defender’s actions and it must be heart-rending for the victims in this imbroglio, Wayne Bridge and Mrs T. It must be especially hard to accept as this is being splashed across the pages of newspapers up and down the country but the truth must out.

It would seem hard to outdo the cant that so many have been involved with but someone got pretty close on the 5 Live 606 phone-in on Saturday night. A Liverpool fan phoned to register her moral outrage at the actions of the English captain. The very minimum that was required, she argued, was that Terry should not be able to wear the captain’s armband for his country ever again.

So this harpie must have thought that when her beloved club captain Stephen Gerrard was seen on cctv punching a man repeatedly in the face, that this was conduct acceptable in a man of authority. True, Gerrard was acquitted but the evidence of the assault was still there for all to see and the legal niceties of provocation and circumstance do not disguise a cowardly and vicious assault.

Clearly, in this woman’s eyes, it is just fine and dandy compared to a spot of infidelity. The concern is that so many people side with her and the country’s moral compass is spinning wildly out of control. What is worst is the attitude of the media and the establishment.

Hicks Tricks Ricks

Hicks Junior was clearly absent when the customer care seminar was held at Anfield. If he had been there he might have picked up a couple of do’s and dont’s. In the latter category calling a supporter fuckface would have been fairly high up the list. He also must have missed the bit about “the customer is always right” and treat everyone with due respect.

The Hicks family were not exactly flavour of the month on Merseyside beforehand and young Hicks has not helped their cause. One can only shiver at the reaction of a Shankly or Paisley to such crass insensitivity, stupidity, idiocy. Such a situation would have been inconceivable a few decades when football club board members were at best anonymous, and only the chairman had any visibility.

So the new world order in English football sees more and more high profile foreign raiders muscling in on a game that used to be the preserve of the working class fans and middle class owners. Only Randy Lerner, the wonderfully named but low key, Aston Villa chairman has managed to make a positive impact compared to the debt-guzzling Glazers or the ham-fisted Hicks.

But in the end does it really matter who owns our club? Of course ownership doesn’t matter per se but as finances play an increasingly bigger part in the running of the clubs, then the liquidity and leverage quotients do begin to creep into pre-match chat in the pubs around Fratton Park and beyond.

So now we have reached the point where balance sheets mean more than clean sheets then maybe it’s time, as Hicks Jnr PR might have put it, to tell football “to go to hell”.

ITV OG

One wonders why Michael Grade, executive chairman of ITV, was so embarrassed and apologetic about his network’s coverage of Everton vs Liverpool 4th Round replay on 4th February. Of course to lose transmission of a live match at any time is shoddy, but when it coincides with the critical moment of the whole 120 minutes it borders on the criminal. However, I felt the unscheduled diversion added an extra dimension to the viewing experience and this is surely what most broadcasters are aiming for when they pitch for sports rights.

For what was not the most gripping of Merseyside derbies, the majority of viewers were readying themselves for the artificial denouement of the penalty shoot-out. Indeed ITV seemed to have given up the ghost on a goal being scored after nearly 2 hours of football. When match commentator, Clive Tyldesley, starts discussing Liverpool’s impressive history in shoot-outs, having won 10 out of 11, it is a sure sign that the graphics guys are preparing the respective grids to illustrate successes and failures.

So settling down for the first ever penalty shoot-out between the two rivals, another Everton attack was meandering to its futile conclusion, and with a few minutes remaining the countdown was well and truly on to a dramatic finale. Little did we know how dramatic it was to become, nothing prepared us for what happened next.

From the ensuing action the picture suddenly switched to the FA Cup sponsors’ slightly amateurish vignette of a family watching a game on the sofa briefly before segueing into an ad one of those surreal ads, which you watch open-mouthed and then feel the need to check that the wife hasn’t slipped a Mickey Finn into your beer. It involved a golfer hitting a ball into a greenside bunker, which was populated by either very large sperm or the unheralded return of the Smurfs, who then headed the ball into the hole. Wow.

Next we were watching a man being punched in the face, which one had to assume was the Production Director getting his comeuppance from Mr. Grade. Whatever it was, those 30 seconds contained more action than the previous 118 minutes from Goodison Park.

Just as I considered how this really was more entertaining than the match, then we were transported back to the charmingly named, Dan Gosling being mobbed by his teammates. We were not sure what the young Devonian had done to merit such approbation but it kept the televisual rollercoaster ride going for a few more seconds.

The conspiracy theorists might argue that some bright spark at ITV had decided to pep up the coverage with a mixture of fun and frolics whilst slipping in a few ads to bolster the sparse coffers. So maybe Grade should not conduct the much-anticipated witch hunt but identify the hero of the night.