Jumpers for Goalposts

Back in the 1980s, comedian Paul Whitehouse created a terrific character for The Fast Show on BBC television. Called Ron Manager, the character was apparently based on a famous old post-war football manager called Alec Stock, who was appearing as a pundit on a football match broadcast. He would be asked a question, and with a big smile he would burble on for a while, misty eyed, about how things were back in the day, invariably bringing in phrases like "lovely boys they were", and "kids playing on bomb sites with jumpers for goalposts", before trailing off into silence for a moment, then asking "What was the question?" It was a lovely pastiche, and for those of us of a certain age who had played the game precisely like that (except in fields not bombsites) it rang true.

The point was simply that as far as football is concerned, the Old Days were the Best Days, when life itself was much simpler, especially for kids. It was true then and in my view remains so today. A child of the 1950s, I remember spending hours every day, at least when the sun was shining, kicking a usually flat old football around on the school playground or the field out the back of my best mate's house, with (yes...) jumpers piled up on the often damp ground as goalposts. We watched the FA Cup Final every year as the highlight of the football season, then head off to the field and try to recreate all the best moments: the winning goal, the great save, the best foul and so on. Never mind today's Academies, as a football education it was second to none.

At 14 I joined my local boy's team and began to take it seriously. I had proper boots, proper goalie gloves and instead of jumpers defended a proper goal with wooden posts that seemed vast - it was a full-sized adult goal, not reduced for kids to use, and I was a skinny little kid. I loved it. I stayed with the club for years, through to the adult teams in "men's football" and made the club's First XI at 16 (still a skinny kid but a bit taller). I won the odd trophy, over a period of probably 12 years until my first kid was born and I foolishly stopped playing (in my prime!), but on average probably lost more matches than won. We weren't the strongest club in the league, and my employer's team that I also represented for about 5 years was if anything even weaker. But I loved it - football was always my sporting passion, and remains so to this day.

At its most basic, football then as now was a very simple game. Two teams of 11 players (12 if you included a substitute - only one allowed in my day, not the 5 or 6 as now) tried to score the most goals in 90 minutes, split into two 45 minute halves. Pitches at our level were generally terrible cabbage patches, bumpy and rutted and swamps in mid-winter. Goalposts were either square wooden things or tubular steel, painted white and if you were lucky there were nets and corner flags. The pitch markings were lime and water mix that washed away when it rained, but all to a regulation size measured in yards not metres. Physical contact was not only allowed by expected and could be quite brutal - at least once a season, sometimes more, I could count on being knocked out, to be resuscitated by a sponge full of cold water and snort of smelling salts, dragged to my feet and told to carry on.. Concussion? What was that?

Happy days. And no matter what age, we knew the rules. Handball had to be deliberate for a free kick to be given (a penalty if in the penalty area). Offside was given (when spotted - half the time there was no linesman and the referee behind play) if there were less than two players between attacker and goal when the ball was played to him. When a couple of players came into contact and both claimed a foul, if the ref was unsure he would give a dropped ball, meaning he would stop play, pick the ball up and at the spot the incident had occurred drop it, for one player in each team to kick lumps off each other until one of them got the ball back. If a player was injured, it was usually pretty obvious (there was very little "simulation" - in our terminology cheating - then) we didn't need to be told and would kick the ball out of play while the injured were attended to. His team would invariably take a throw in and give the ball straight back to the other team - simple sportsmanship. We knew mistakes would be made every game, by players AND referees, and just got on with it: over a season they tended to even out - you won some, you lost some.

But when Big Money came into the sport, it all changed. All the sportsmanship and acceptance of mistakes by players and officials alike went out the window, because such things could change results and lose money. Referees, especially in the higher leagues, became less and less popular, their mistakes magnified by an unforgiving press and television. Crowds became less patient too, and the officials (linesmen included) routinely vilified for their apparent mistakes. Even down at my local level, where you paid to play football and ref's were generally volunteers found by the home team (there are never enough qualified ref's to go around) the same was true. In kid's football, where pushy parents could not accept their offspring's team losing, or their kid being fouled or substituted, I found myself under fire when I was managing my son's team and regularly ref'ing or linesman.

Of course, the sport's governing bodies got in on the act, and continue to ruin football on a season-by-season basis. A lot of the changes were needed - much of the brutality has gone now, and the skill and fitness levels of even lower league footballers has improved as a result.

This is fine, but the ceaseless search from perfection, which by definition since all humans are susceptible to mistakes (it's one of the things that makes us human) is impossible, is now reaching nonsensical levels. Rules seem to be changed with little rhyme or reason, and new technology, introduced to "help" match officials is doing precisely the opposite.

An example. Until a couple of seasons ago, when a team kicked off, either at the start of a half or after conceding a goal, the ball had to move forward and no-one else was allowed to touch it until it had moved its circumference - so about 18 inches. So there were always two players, one to tap the ball forward and a second to play a pass, either forward, backwards or to either side, and either a short or a long distance. It had been so since the original Laws had been written towards the end of the 19th century. But now, the ball can be played straight backwards or to either side (and presumably forward) any distance. So at kick off, invariably the ball is passed straight back ten, twenty yards or more. Why? How has this improved the game?

Or again, with goal kicks or free kicks given to the defending team within its penalty area. Until this season, the ball had to leave the area before another player of either team could play it. This too worked well from the original rules - a keeper would normally take the kick and launch the ball to the halfway line, or kick perhaps 15 yards either side, to clear the area and allow a defender to continue building play or return the ball to him. Now - the ball does NOT have to leave the area so the keeper can now roll the ball a foot or so to his team mate. Again - why? Where is that an improvement?

Penalties are now given when the ball accidentally hits a defender's arm anywhere between shoulder and fingertip, if the arm is away from his body and thus "altering his body shape". Players are becoming adept at deliberately kicking to arm from close range, giving the defender no chance to avoid the contact, and defenders are struggling to keep their balance with their arms literally held behind their back (to avoid changing body shape) - hard enough on feet and impossible when jumping. Which clown devised that little gem?

Offsides, too, have changed such that a player can be called offside if a single small portion - his nose for instance, or toe - of his body is ahead of the last defender. To help judge this, new technology has been introduced that uses clever computer simulation to identify the appropriate straight line across the pitch at the most forward part of the last defender (let's say his right knee) and then viewing if any part of the attacker is even further forward. This has resulted in players being given offside because their nose, big toe, knee or even armpit has been adjudged to be a centimetre or two "offside". In the good old days - indeed, last season) the forward would have been given the benefit of the doubt in such marginal decisions and praised for perfectly timing his run. Whole careers - lucrative ones at that! - have been built on such small margins.

This simulation has given rise to the Video Assistant Referee (VAR for short). The idea is that another referee will be watching the game on monitors in a room somewhere miles away from the ground, and when he sees something suspicious, he tells the referee (with whom he is in radio contact!) who holds the play until the VAR official has reviewed the pictures from multiple angles and made his decision. It's only supposed to be used for close contentious decisions like offsides or possible fouls and who actually kicked the ball out for a corner, and of course penalties. Further, the on-pitch referee is supposed to review the decision too on a pitch side monitor. The on pitch referee can change his decision if he is in agreement, or overrule the VAR ref. In reality the on pitch referee very rarely does this - he's essentially ducking the responsibilities that pay him the best part of hundred grand a year.

All of this is simply spoiling the game. Part of the fun of football, for players and supporters alike, was the controversies that mistakes create. Look at any club forum or supporters chat room in the lower leagues (VAR is only used in the Premier League) and most of the discussion centres around the performance of the ref, whether this or that player really was offside, whether that handball was deliberate or not.....in my day all that argument would (and still does) take place in the pub after the match. For top flight games - and these inevitably take up most television time and print inches - the argument now is why the VAR ref yet again overruled the match ref, whether half of Giroud's right foot really was in an offside position or not, and why did the match ref not look at the bloody monitor himself, the twat!

To this old footballer, all these changes are simply ruining football, taking all the fun away from it, and replacing the reasoned discussion that even the most partisan supporter is still capable of with an endless stream of vitriol and abuse. It's such as shame, but of course FIFA will never back down and change things back the way they used to be even a couple of years ago. Like it or not, we are saddled with ridiculous and meaningless rule changes and VAR for good or ill (mostly ill, in my view). But I really do believe things were better when we had jumpers for goalposts.