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World of the News

~ For the universal in today's top stories

Tag Archives: Football

#113 A Question Of Consent

October 16, 2016

Sculpted features and lips cherry red against his sombre suit, Ched Evans seething, subsiding, standing next to his solicitor reading a statement, close to the fiancée who stood right by him throughout.

Convicted of rape in 2012, now exonerated after a re-trial, in the meantime the Welsh footballer served two-and-a-half years of a five-year prison sentence.

Three in a bed that early summer night. Hardly enough floor space in Room 14 for three young muckers to be anywhere else. Bedspread’s the corporate colour purple. Legs spread and calling the cum shots, he has always said. Too drunk or drugged (not by him) to have given her consent, she has always maintained.

But how did they end up here, in a scene of well-used furniture and a woman who feels ill-used? The chronology is clear enough: exiting the Zu Bar, dark interior and don’t look at the carpet (now permanently closed); wobbly walk across seaside town well-past its best. And was there kissing in the back of the cab?

Timing is key to the court room. But our line of questioning is of a different order: how is this tawdry scene the counterpart of what we often see, for example, on the football field – flair, determination, even nobility? Aside from who said what or not that night about having sex, if This Is Your Life – the life of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ LLareggub but spelled the other way round – the wonder is that any of us consent to it.

#12 XXXXX XXXXX Has Left The Club

April 23, 2014

Forlorn, fatalistic, farewell. Just the one hand raised – splayed fingers, flat palm facing camera – says all of these. A gallery of many, further images shows him variously driven, distraught, rueful, resourceful, far-sighted, near-sighted.

Clear blue eyes surely clouded with regret? Doesn’t show; you wouldn’t know. No mean face – Glasgow-born; leafy suburb – labour aristocracy. Built to take hard knocks and stay in shape (composure’s for keeping not losing). Regular features; teeth now more regular than they ought to be, going by early photos from playing days. Winning smile – that’s a laugh – may always have lacked conviction; or this might be reading history backwards. Was there a moment when you lost them; more accurately, when you lost yourself and couldn’t keep hold of the squad? I know nothing of your sort of dressing room. Showers and towels and all kinds of shenanigans back in the 1970s – stock pictures are all I’ve got to go on. On stage I know it can happen in the space of a drum beat, all because you didn’t leave enough space between one beat and the next. But even the instant –the moment of failure – is not simply instantaneous. Ever the before and after: continuously unfolding; never predetermined. None of them pre-set, a series of defeats beat David Moyes, former Manchester United manager as of 8.30am Tues 22 April 2014.

‘Hideously White’ – Ha, Ha! But That’s Only Half The Story

October 19, 2013

It’s tempting to say of Greg Dyke: hoist with his own petard. The former Director General who once complained that the BBC was ‘hideously white’, is now at risk of a white-out. The only man ever to put a Rat (Roland) on a sinking ship (TV AM: he turned it round and made a tidy profit), may be pushed out of his nearly new role as chair of the Football Association (FA) after complaints about his hideously white appointees to the FA Commission on the future of the English game.

In an open letter to his chief critic, ‘Greg’ (just don’t call me ‘Gregory’) even cites his ‘hideously white’ comment as proof of his bona fides.

Greg – I know you won’t mind me calling you that, ‘cos that’s the down to earth guy you are – have you never heard the saying: ‘those who live in glass houses’? Just glance at a looking-glass…..

But if it’s easy to have a go at Greg for being right-on, man of the people, down with the black and ethnic minority communities – only to have it blow back in his hideously white face, it’s hard to accept that this is what became of the generation which saw television as a genuinely popular medium; the people’s window on the world.

Their rise was imbued with widespread hope for the extension of social democracy; their demise represents its dramatic contraction.

Black and white David Frost, close-cropped hair and skinny ties, in the 1960s the most intelligent man in TV. Greg Dyke’s seven-year ascent from junior researcher to head of London Weekend Television, delivering entertainment and current affairs in full 1970s colour: not bad for a Whispering Bob Harris lookalike.

Intelligence was everything – among these broadcasters but also on the part of the audience they were broadcasting to. Patronising – a whole way of life for their successors – is just what they didn’t do. read more

Too much monkey business

January 4, 2013

Kevin-Prince Boateng, Ghanaian international playing for AC Milan in a friendly against a little local team at their crummy little ground, makes to kick the ball into the small crowd. But it’s not quite high enough – hits a hoarding, bounces back towards the pitch. Boateng strides over to the group making the noise – half-mooing, half-monkey. Blood up, jutting chin, leaning forward as if about to dive into them; though they are fenced off and standing high above the astroturf on a kind of concrete flyover. Whistles and catcalls in response. Meanwhile, the ref has a word in his shell-like; ditto a succession of players from both teams. They’re remonstrating with him. Not exactly restraining him, but hand on arm, shoulder, wrist, elbow; asking him to hold on. When he turns his back on the group of fans that goaded him, the other footballers fall away, letting him go, assuming normal game play will be resuming shortly. Having broken away, however, he ain’t coming back. Spits on the ground, waggles a finger at the offending section of the crowd, and walks further way. Still further, and only now is it clear he’s walking off the pitch. The Milan Channel commentator keeps saying ‘incredibile’. Boateng takes his shirt off to confirm he’s finished. Praying his career isn’t. But already some spectators are starting to applaud; meanwhile the monkey contingent is left mooing around, listless. Another Milan player, previously uninvolved, crosses the pitch to fall in behind him. A few moments ago, the loneliest walk (no matter what the song says). Now a whole world of officialdom wants to walk alongside him: we salute you, Prince among men. But as their world turns to take him in, it commandeers Boateng’s defiant gesture and turns it into a vindication of snobbery: superior cappuccino culture, complete with expensive haircuts and metrosexual little beards, versus puffa jackets, shaved heads and beanies; my god, you’d think they were from Eastern Europe not the Mediterranean. And the name of the small town club where it happened, Pro Patria, feeds right into this part-fantasy of football terraces versus the vineyard. read more

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