Month: April 2012

Viewers of the BBC’s flagship football programme Match Of The Day were treated to a somewhat extraordinary sight last weekend when presenter Gary Lineker launched into a somewhat bizarre impersonation of the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger complaining about refereeing decisions going against his team during their match earlier that day against Stoke City. Whilst this behaviour could arguably be described as offensive and certainly wasn’t funny, it also shone a light on the slow, drawn-out decay arguably British football’s most venerable television institution. Match Of The Day will be fifty years old in two years time, and we can reasonably certain that this is a birthday that we will hear a considerable amount about. There is little that the BBC seems to enjoy more than eulogising its own heritage, and there can be little questioning its historical importance in the development of the televising of football in this country. It was the first regular, nationally broadcast programme dedicated to the national game (after a brief sojourn at its inception when it was shown only to viewers in the London region in BBC2) and it has been, barring a couple of brief intermissions when rights to broadcast matches were, somewhat inconveniently, lost to other companies, a mainstay of the winter schedules since then. For many, many years the  format remained largely unchanged. There would be extended highlights of one match until...

This weekend saw the end of the normal season for many of the leagues below the Football League and the beginning of the play-offs in some. This weekend, we’re going to have a look at a few of the outstanding issues at the top and bottom of the leagues, starting in the Blue Square Bet South, where a Sutton United side jostling for the best position possible in the play-off positions was at home against a Farnborough team that has only narrowly avoided relegation at the bottom of the table. Next up is a match from Division One North of the Ryman League. Leiston led the way going into the final match of the season, but with their match against Potters Bar Town rained off, attention switched to the match between Grays Athletic and Enfield Town, where a win for Enfield would put them top of the table whilst leaving Leiston needing a win from their final match to snatch top place in the league back at the last. In Division One South & West of the Southern League, Bideford Town had already been crowned as champions but they were still looking to end the season on a high from their trip to second-placed Poole Town, who were looking for a win to build some confidence before their end of season play-off matches. Finally, the end of the season...