Well, that was another strange week and 2015 certainly seems hell-bent on trumping its predecessors when it comes to creating football’s Dinner Party from Hell XI. Ched Evans, Dave Whelan and John Fashanu can count themselves in. Gordon Taylor has just put his name on the door and let’s not forget Eric Hall after his return to television and an unexpected opportunity to discuss the “rape schtick” in a salmon blazer, blue hankie combo that quickly made you realise he hadn’t changed a bit, regrettably.
Remember Eric? It’s been a while since he used to subject us to “monster monster” and tick every box when it came to the football agent’s worst stereotypes, pigging his way to the bank in the days of Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney and mobile phones the size of bricks. These days you have probably managed to miss him unless you live in Billericay or Brentwood and ever tune into Phoenix FM. He is fixed up now with a radio gig in Romford and it is tempting to wonder how far Channel 4 and ITV had to flick through their contact books to find someone to play the pro-Evans role opposite one of the “so-called do-gooders” Charlie Webster. Or whether they just went straight to the page marked R for Rent‑a-Quote.
Hall certainly reminded us about the line of patter we had missed so much, not just the “rape shtick” but the “schmucks” who did not conform with his view that everyone should get off Evans’s back. His co-guest was one and got a wonderfully patronising “my darling” for her troubles, live on the news.
Webster, a former Sky Sports presenter, campaigns against sexual abuse because she suffered it herself but Hall cut her off mid-sentence – “Why didn’t you campaign about Mike Tyson?” – and two thoughts came to mind. One, who can be surprised if people look inside football’s bubble sometimes and shudder at what they see? And, two, what does it say for Evans that the bloke they hired to talk on his behalf was voted fourth in a Most Hated Man in Britain poll in 1996 and memorably once claimed Freddie Mercury had written Killer Queen about him – with the back-up story, just in case anyone doubted him, that “I don’t want to be big-headed, he fancied me like mad”.
At least we know what to expect with Hall and if the television researchers want to give football a semblance of credibility they will stick a black marker pen through his name next time. Yet it is not supposed to be that way with Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, where it is reported some colleagues want him to retire and he apparently now feels qualified enough to indicate there may have been a miscarriage of justice in a rape trial he did not attend.
Who knew as well that Steve Bruce had trained as a defence lawyer and understood more about the intricacies of the Evans case than the 12 jurors who sat through the trial, saw the witnesses take the stand and devoted themselves to eight days of evidence and cross-examination in court?
“I might be upsetting people but there is a question of the rape and how he’s been convicted,” Bruce volunteered. “When you look in detail – and I don’t think most people have really, because they have just seen Ched Evans as a convicted rapist – Ched has got a case.”
And there we have it: the manager of Hull City putting a jury right on the basis of some newspaper reports, a bit of fiddling around on Google and a few clicks on a highly dubious campaign website.
Taylor had already blundered in by saying that Evans would not have been the first person who would ultimately be “proved right” and, sorry to labour this point, but as someone who has worked in news, covered criminal trials and knows the meticulous detail of these events (and how little is reported) it is always baffling that anyone should presume their armchair verdict is better than the jury’s. Maybe Evans is scum; maybe he is innocent. Maybe both. Bruce might end up feeling vindicated – who knows? Just don’t position yourself as an authority on the subject on the basis of second‑hand scraps.
Taylor managed to go even further with his comparison to the injustice suffered by the Hillsborough families, necessitating an apology in which he pretty much said the same again, just in different words, and had to apologise for the apology, which is never a good look.
Presumably, he will just sit tight now and wait for football’s outrage to move on. It always does eventually, but is anyone else engulfed by the deja vu of wondering how he justifies that salary, last disclosed as £984,000 a year, and what a bewildering organisation the PFA appears with someone so spectacularly cringeworthy – the best‑paid union official in Britain, no less – as its figurehead?
No doubt there are some good people behind the scenes, but could you name even three of the other senior figures? Ritchie Humphreys, of Chesterfield, is rumoured to be the chairman. Yet you have done better than me if you have heard him utter a single word on the Evans case; or anything of relevance since he took the role 14 months ago. Otherwise, it feels like a one-man show – and that is never good when the man in question appears to have his brain permanently on cruise control.
Speaking of which, let’s hope Oldham can now go back to the days when it was never really any more controversial than that time Chaddy Owl beat up Bloomfield Bear at Blackpool. There are, however, still a couple of things that don’t quite stack up. Those revelations about death threats, for starters, and the specific warning about what would happen to a staff member’s daughter. Any journalist ringing Greater Manchester police has been told the same thing: that they have checked with the club and the sponsors and been told of zero threats and nothing worse than the usual “low-level abuse” on Twitter. So work that one out.
Evans, meanwhile, was showing a selflessness that had not been apparent previously by explaining it was him who ended the talks out of consideration to others and – this is almost touching – the “most significant issue” was that his signing might put off sponsors and jeopardise the building of Oldham’s new stand. “That would mean workers would lose their jobs and others would be put at risk,” he said. “That would simply not be fair.”
Very sweet. But let’s just walk through that one again. One of the sponsors is Verlin Rainwater Solutions, a guttering firm whose name went up on one of the stands in exchange for repairing various leaks. Mecca Bingo and Nando’s contribute nothing more than £2,000 per year and a few half-time prizes. ZenOffice’s annual input is little more than £10,000 and Sports Direct had privately made it clear it was going nowhere. The stand is funded largely by a £5.7m package Oldham council agreed in 2011 and started going up in October, opening at the start of next season.
Confused? Well, it isn’t easy to know what is genuine and what is spin – but this is football in 2015, when it feels increasingly like we should be suspicious of every official statement and the champions, Manchester City, have just been exposed as prolific benders of the truth and still appear to be struggling to get their story straight when it comes to the Mysterious Case of Frank Lampard.
If nothing else, it is always nice when the mistruths are shown up and there isn’t the proper space to explain how much I enjoyed Dave Beasant’s deconstruction the other night of Fashanu’s warped Wimbledon memories, including the peculiar observation from “Fash” that the Crazy Gang were “the brothers I never had” (he did have a brother).
So, yes, it has been an odd start to the year. When Marlon King was serving a prison sentence for sexual assault and ABH in 2009 Taylor released a statement that is worth reflecting on now. “The PFA does not represent players when they have broken the law and been convicted on non-football matters.”
It does now, clearly, making up the rules as it goes along, while the rest of us watch through the gaps in our fingers.
Classic fanzines should not vanish in the blogosphere
Back in the day, it used to be that supporters found their collective voice in fanzines. They went by wonderfully imaginative names such as Fly Me To The Moon (Middlesbrough) and Brian Moore’s Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium (Gillingham).
They were stapled together, self‑produced and scruffily endearing, and over the years you had to admire their dedication. “Look out your window,” West Stand Bogs, taking its usual place outside Barnsley’s ground, instructed its Twitter followers recently. “You see that torrential rain? You know why that is? Fanzine day. That’s why.” And that has often been the fanzine editor’s lot: standing in the cold for hours on end, trying not to look too put out when someone asks if it is the programme.
The numbers have been steadily dwindling and Red Issue will be the latest to call it a day this weekend after almost 26 years operating outside Manchester United and a brief period when the club stocked it on their own premises. “Always keen to help, Alex Ferguson initially gave approval for Red Issue to be sold in the official souvenir shop,” the Manchester Evening News reported in March 1989. “But then he read it – and copies of the 50p magazine were withdrawn from sale!”
Red Issue has been a bastion of dependable cynicism ever since, spiky and rebellious and living up to the observation in the same newspaper report that “fanzines go for the jugular, exposing foibles and indiscretions without mercy”.
The final issue is No295 and my hunch is that it has grown weary of fighting the fight. One columnist sums it up: “You can only kick for so many years before the toe caps on your boots wear out.”
What a shame, though, to see the fanzine culture slowly dying out. Red Issue is one of the few that has kept up decent sales but others have disappeared as a direct result of the internet age. It’s a time of blogs, podcasts and message-boards, and supporters have other ways these days to read about their teams, connect with one another and affiliate themselves with the kind of groups that have just persuaded Vincent Tan to return Cardiff City from red to blue.
At least some old classics – A Love Supreme (Sunderland), The Gooner (Arsenal) and A Kick Up The Rs (QPR), to name but three – are still operating. Long may it continue and if you remember when it didn’t feel like a proper match day unless you came away with one you will understand why they still matter – and why we should embrace the ones that are still going strong.
The Massey mystery
Has anyone heard from referees’ chief Mike Riley lately? The question is asked not because his predecessor, Keith Hackett, has openly questioned his leadership and recommended dropping Mike Jones, Andre Marriner, Lee Mason, Chris Foy and Lee Probert from the Premier League list. Or because of Graham Poll’s claim that Riley should be fired. It is, however, blindingly obvious that the referees and their assistants are suffering a collective loss of form (Jon Moss did exceedingly well to avoid Hackett’s list) and Riley could at least offer a few words about what has gone wrong and what needs to be done to put it right. He could also explain when Sian Massey is back. Massey has not had a top-division game all season because of an unspecified injury – and she has certainly been missed.
