Television
114111d Cup run-up live Gammon
It was like 1952, watching the England/East Germany game last week on ITV. It comes as a sharp visual shock to see a soccer game in black and white, unless it's a clip of Tommy Lawton with his centre
Parting and baggy shorts flickeringly materialising in the Penalty area and bulging the back of a long-rotted net with a longforgotten shot. As a matter of fact, the East German players, though they were fittingly clothed in 1974 gear, looked a bit Lawton-like about the haircut and none the worse for that you might think if you recall the lank-haired Ruben Ayala of the Argentine in tile recent Wembley game.
With the soccer bloW-out still to come from Germany next month (and the month after!) it might be thought that a decent period of Lenten denial could have taken Place before both channels start Pumping out duplicated World Cup soccer, but instead it has been Practically non-stop over the past few weeks, what with the home countries championship and now England's foray into Eastern Europe. Maybe we viewers are just a chopping block for the BBC/ITV sPorts war. Otherwise, how can you account for ITV, after last Wed rlesday night's game, visually advertising England versus West Germany on the following Saturday and waiting for quite a long time before adding, just voice over, that Lt Was a game between schoolboys? the World Cup business is frankly farcical and for this the self-satisfied intransigence of the BBC is clearly to blame.
I mustn't let all this give the linpression that I'm 'anti-sport Where the box is concerned: I don't exactly sit unshaven with a sixPack of beer right through Saturday ,4fternoons and Match of the Day otit I'm game for most of it except roaYbe for wrestling, invented tellysports like motocross, ghastly Showjumping and, ah yes, Rugby League or Worm Grubbing as it is L' tulown down our way from the curious little heel-scratchings which 'telly sport part and parcel of its rules. If sport has done one thing it is 1-0 show up the vain claims of pro 11.1gby: it is played at about half the Pace of Rugby Union. It is also eu tir predictable in comparison 'Vith the latter which is a game that Is much more complex and allows 'or some much more pleasing invention.
Indeed, Rugby Union, were it organised,the way soccer is? would PrObably prove to be the most atIractive of all spectator sports — it already is where international been ever concerned and has ueen ever since the rule chances Which opened up its true potential. 'at club level, though, ancient fixture 4ists which can seemingly never be changed and the idea that
any kind of league championship would lead to professionalism have ossified the game for the moment.
It's hard to know how catholic an approach to .sport is justifiable on television. ITV is the more adventurous. On Saturday, for example, they ran the Hawaian Masters stiffing championship on the Banzai Pipeline in International Sports Special. Surfing is a marvellously beatitiful sport to watch, a true telly sport, though admittedly it doesn't have the concrete, easily observed kind of result that makes showjumping so easy to appraise. It was ITV, who let us see the Miami Dolphins/Minnesota Vikings Super Bowl playoff earlier in the Year, 'a welcome change from the kind of parochialism that hoists some dull league soccer game into sounding like the match of the century.
' Overselling, in fact, is the worst 'feature of TV sport. The truth is t at the majority of soccer matches, because of the modern nature of the gaine, are somewhat dull, and conimentary just short of hysteria, when there is patently very little excitement on the field, becomes irritating.
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