Why can't football commentators believe it when the ball goes in the net? It's the whole point of the game

It's FA Cup Semi Final weekend this weekend.

As usual one of them is on Sky and one of them on terrestrial TV, and to make it more convenient for people who like to get a multipack of beer in, they're both being shown in the evening (ish).  One on Saturday and one on Sunday.  This means I'll only be able to watch one of them.  I stopped subscribing to Sky years ago.  In fact, I wish I'd never joined.  Since they started pumping all that money in, the players keep getting richer while the fans keep getting poorer.  I think buying a Sky subscription just helps a few people get a lot richer, so I'm not in favour of it, although I would be if I was one of those few.  Only age and a lack of natural talent have prevented that from happening.

Anyway, the FA Cup semi-final weekend I remember most fondly is 1990.  This was pre-Sky.  Both semi finals were on the BBC, and they were on the same day (I think it might have been the first time this had ever happened, at one time they never showed them at all).  They were on during the day, and I watched them one after the other.  And they just might have been the best two back to back football matches I've ever seen. For the record Crystal Palace beat Liverpool 4-3 and Oldham and Manchester United drew 3-3.

It was as exciting as football gets.  I won't attempt to explain why.  If you hate football, you'll think I'm nuts, and if you like football you'll know what I mean.

The final was also pretty exciting.  Crystal Palace and Manchester United.  It finished 3-3 and it had to go to replay (this was before penalty shoot-outs on the day).  That same summer it was the World Cup, and Gazza's tears and Lineker's goals and Stuart Pearce's patriotism and Shilton's statue impersonations.  In those days, I still looked up to and respected the England team (except for Shilton) and Bobby Robson was there, and if we were disappointed watching at home on TV, losing in the semi-final to Germany or West Germany, how disappointed must they have been?  And when they came home, they were treated like heroes, because they were, because they were good, and they came so close, not like the last lot in 2010, who were run ragged by some German kids, so much so that instead of sharing the collective gloom of defeat, I was laughing by the end.  Ruth came in at one point, and she hasn't a clue about football, but even she could tell England were hopeless, and she was laughing too, at how easy the Germans were finding it to score.

Anyway, back to the FA Cup.  What I wanted to say was this.  And this is one of the things I still don't understand about football.  And about commentators in particular.  Why is it, that in a game where the entire point of the game is to score goals, it is considered amazing, incredible, unbelievable even, when goals are scored?  Especially when the game finishes 3-3 for example.  That means that 22 fit blokes have been running round aiming at the goals for an hour and a half, and they've only managed to succeed in getting it in there 6 times.  Sometimes there aren't any goals at all, and they don't even get a shot in at the goalie.  As I once heard Brian Clough say when he was being interviewed at Waterstone's in Middlesbrough.  The goals don't move.  Why don't footballers know this?

I suppose one answer to this question is obvious.  Not all 22 are kicking the ball the same way.  Half of them are trying to stop the other half from scoring. I'm sure my plumber would have had a lot harder job, plumbing in my toilet if while he was trying to do it, another plumber was trying to get in the way, and stop him.  Thankfully, that's not how plumbers work.  It's not usually competitive, once they're on site.

And I know the pitch is big, and the goals are small, and I know they even have a guy on each team whose job it is to stand in the middle of the goal and try and stop the ball going in.  And he can even use his hands!

I'm not saying scoring goals is easy.  I played football competitively about a hundred times, and I only scored about 10 goals.  4 of them were in the same game against a really crap team, and another 3 were scored in two games against a team of tiny kids who looked like they were playing in the wrong age group.  Another one accidentally went in off the back of my head and another one I scored after I'd had about 10 chances and missed them all, and I nearly managed to get the one I did get in saved and if the young boy chasing it as it trickled over the line hadn't tripped it probably wouldn't have made it.

So no, I'm not saying it's easy.  What I'm saying is that when it happens, it's not amazing.  It's not incredible, it's not unbelievable.  It's normal.  Some goals are amazing, but a few goals in the same game is not.  It's the whole point of the game.  Stop trying to make it sound better than it is.  Stop labelling things with adjectives.

It's like when somebody prefaces a story with 'It's actually quite a funny story...'.  These stories are never funny.  Another thing football commentators do during a good game, is tell you what a great advertisement it is for football.  No other sport does this!

In my opinion, the unintended consequence of saying how unbelievable it is when goals are scored, and of telling us what a great advertisement it is for football when the game is entertaining, is that by implication they are also saying that most of the time football is total crap.......

....ah well, that explains it then.

Clare Balding - can you do my funeral?

I accidentally watched the Boat Race today.  I was at my mum's house with a few minutes to kill while I waited for her to bring me a giant plateful of curry, and when I turned the telly on, there it was.  It was just starting.  I used to watch it when I was younger, but in those days I'd watch anything.

I thought it would be quite boring, but it was actually very engrossing, because the teams seemed to be very evenly matched.  Then about 10 minutes in, some bloody idiot swam in front of the boats, and only the quick intervention of the umpires, in particular the reserve umpire Matthew Pinsent, stopped the idiot from getting his stupid head cut off.  It was more consideration that he deserved.

In order to avoid slicing the guy's head off, the teams had to stop rowing, and then they had to wait another half an hour before they could restart the race.  The idiot went off to be arrested, smiling to himself.

Seven months it takes to train for the Boat Race.  Seven months of getting up at dawn, and training and practising, and dedication, and self-discipline, and self-denial.  And it was all ruined in a few seconds.

Immediately after the eventual restart of the race, Oxford got the end of one of their oars knocked off, and the race was effectively over.  Shame they didn't lose it in the guy's head half an hour earlier.

It was all unsatisfactory.  Disappointing, and sad.  The losers were distraught, one of them, completely spent with the effort of trying to make up for the missing oarsman, was unconscious and needed urgent medical attention.  And the winners were subdued.  There was no presentation.  No-one felt like celebrating.

And hopping around, on the quayside, with ants in her pants, was Clare Balding.  Doing that sports presenter thing of trying to make everything sound exciting, and better than it is, and getting reaction, and all that jazz.  It's been extra-ordinary, dramatic, unprecedented, she said.  I've run out of superlatives, she said.

The thing was, the occasion didn't need superlatives, it didn't need audio description, I wasn't sitting there with a blindfold on.  This was TV, not radio.  Everything that you needed to know could be seen, it didn't need spelling out to us like we were 5 year olds.  It was quite apparent that the Oxford team, especially the female cox, were absolutely distraught. It was pretty clear that all these people, who had given so much in preparation for this day, were just trying to deal with what had happened, in the best way they could, and shoving a microphone up their nose, and asking them for their 'reaction' and for the 'latest' didn't do anyone any favours.

She kept interviewing people, in that excited 'I'm a little puppy, please like me' way that she has, and at one point she segued clumsily from telling us about the 12 stone Oxford rower who was now unconscious, who was the lightest guy in the race, to the 17 stone Cambridge fella, who was the heaviest.  The interview with the 17 stone giant was made more comical, because she was at the bottom of some steps, and he was at the top, so it was like watching Gulliver's Travels.

Everyone she interviewed was polite, and tried to make sense of it all, even though it didn't really make any sense, and Matthew Pinsent pointed out, with as much disappointed dignity as he could,. that underneath everything that had happened, it had been a really good race.  Yes, Matthew, shame it won't be remembered for that first 10 minutes, when it was.

The whole occasion was like a wake, and watching Clare do her thing, was like watching someone interview mourners at a funeral.  'Oh, look here's Uncle Charlie, he's the lightest of the mourners at 9 stone 7, what did you make of the cremation, Charlie?'.  'Excuse me a moment, Auntie Maude, can I have your reaction to the choice of 'My Heart Will Go On', for the musical accompaniment to the casket disappearing into the furnace?'.  It was uncomfortable viewing.

I know that sports commentators and summarisers have got a job to do, but sometimes it feels like we're being treated like idiots.  It's not necessary to keep telling us how amazing and memorable and unprecedented and unbelievable it all is.  There's pictures.  Now and again, why don't you just let the pictures tell the story?

Anyone looking at the pictures today could plainly see the suffering in the participants, the sadness and the crushing disappointment.  Wouldn't it have been kinder, just to let them grieve in peace?

I give up! - The TV's so small I can't even see it

Recently I have managed to cut down my TV watching by exchanging the big telly for a medium sized one, and sitting further away from it.  So far so good.

Then Michael came home from Uni, and he took the medium sized telly up to his bedroom, and he left me with a portable telly.  I could barely see the actual TV anymore, never mind make out anything that was happening on it, so that reduced my viewing pleasure even further.  As a result I've been putting the radio on even more, because I don't need to see Stuart Maconie to know what's going on in his show. 

And by putting the radio on, I got to hear a brilliant interview with Johnny Marr.  I usually think musicians are pretty boring to listen to, but he was anything but.

Trying to see the telly has become so bloody hopeless that I took the TV and the TV stand away, and stuck a Christmas tree there instead of both of them.  And now Michael has commandeered the big telly that's attached to the DVD player, so I haven't got a hope of watching anything on TV these days.

The funny thing is, I am not really missing it.  And I am getting more done. 

So my life at the moment is, evolutionally speaking, going into reverse.  I am regressing from a coach potato into a walking talking homo sapien.  Today I even managed to master the fundamentals of basic tool use.

Hooray for no TV.