TEN years from now which sports will be competing with football for prime time television? Arguably, none.

Football coverage has never been so all-embracing, although rugby has begun to attract crowds in excess of 30,000 and Wasps RFC are using Twickenham for their most attractive matches as they entice 50,000+ to watch them play.

Such popularity has a domino effect not just in rugby but in any sport. For the more people there are at a game, the more it will attract TV coverage.

The more TV coverage, the more that the sport will entice other people to turn up to watch it. The more people who turn up, the more interest advertisers and sponsors will show, which means that more money will be pumped into the club and through that into the sport.

This wasn’t always the case but we now live in a global village where Media Power is king. I have been reminded of this twice in recent weeks. The first occasion was when I watched a selection of TV clips dating to the 1960s and early 70s.

After about 15 minutes I began to fidget in my seat. After 20 minutes I idly picked up the JEP and began to flick through it. I was becoming bored, even though the goals were as good as any scored today and some of the players were particular heroes of mine including the likes of Denis Law, Peter Osgood, Malcolm MacDonald and Kevin Hector.

However, we have become so used to modern TV that a goal scored in black and white no longer has the same impact as one scored in colour.

Similarly, we have become used to action replays, slow motion footage and all kinds of camera angles which soccer pundits can analyse from the comfort of the studio.

In other words, modern technology has dressed football up to such an extent that the game would be tame entertainment without it: which brings me to a recent interview with Steve Watson, president of the Jersey Badminton Association.

During our conversation I explained that I loved watching top class badminton and that in the Island Games in Guernsey I’d virtually lived in the badminton hall. Some of the games were out of this world in terms of quality and drama.

However, there were rarely any TV cameras there and, when there were, invariably it would just be one camera, one cameraman and a reporter whose brief was to capture no more than 30 seconds of the action on film.

Similarly, on national TV, only rarely does badminton feature – and only then in the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics when British players are involved.

Yet badminton can be such an exhilarating spectator sport. So, too, can netball (which at long last is being given half-decent TV coverage). Meanwhile it has never ceased to amaze me that so much prime time TV is dedicated to a static game like darts while occasionally even Formula One fails to enthrall me, as I watch a procession of cars follow each other around a motorcar track.

The point I’m making is this. If other sports were given as many cameramen; as many camera angles; as many experts to analyse the game as we now have in football, the viewing public would see those sports in a very different light.

They would attract a fan base; sponsors would want a share of that popularity and slowly but surely the Media Monster that football has become would be less dominant and other sports would achieve some kind of parity.

It won’t happen overnight, of course – but then again, who would have thought that 34 years on from Derby County winning the First Division, I can look away from some of the goals, bored, because they were caught on camera through a misty lens and from what appears to be half a mile away, and not captured in colour!

Last Friday I looked back to 2008 and briefly ahead to 2009. Well, we are now in 2009 and for some Islanders the year will be a chance to relive, regain, or to bring to fruition a sporting chance denied them this time last year.

Take, for example, Lindsey Greechan, who won the final of the British Isles’ Women’s Outdoor Singles’ championship at the Belmont club in Belfast last summer after trailing 11-0 to the then-England champion Edna Bessell.
Like any great champion Lindsey never considers the possibility of losing and if I was Edna (who could conceivably meet Lindsey in this year’s final, to be staged in Jersey), I would take warning by what the world champion said after her extraordinary 21-20 victory. ‘You know me. I love to play under pressure.’

R-E-S-P-E-C-T – Hoping to find out what it all means

Finally, if world-weary islanders are well used to being confronted by the slow chain of bureaucracy, what price a less contentious approach to football in this brave New World.

I mention this because no matter what new initiatives the FA seek to introduce, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt about football over the year, it is that only earthquakes or natural disasters such as plague and pestilence will bring about change.

At the end of June the FA’s regional development manager, Martin Preston, was in Jersey to help launch the JFA’s RESPECT programme. Footballers, and managers, we were told, were being targeted to improve their attitude and behaviour for the good of the game.

This was based on: ‘over 40,000 people (who were consulted). Current behaviour came out at number one above lack of money, limited resources and low support at regional and local level’.

When I first read this report I thought that the survey was pretty pointless. Supporters know that some fans, footballers and managers live in cloud cuckoo-land when it comes to an even-handed approach to the game. Of course ‘current behaviour’ is going to be a problem.

And, as for the RESPECT programme – well, having watched any number of games in the Island and on the box since Martin Preston’s visit, I can’t say I’ve seen any major changes this year compared to last.

Managers huff, puff and swear off camera. Fans argue with the referee. Players dive, foul occasionally, swear at the opposition and, a novelty this year, even get sent off for abusing and slapping their own 1st team captain.

In other words, launching any kind of campaign, however well intentioned, doesn’t mean that it will succeed.

And, just as a point of information, a new world record was set less than a month ago when David Pratt, a striker with non-league side Chippenham Town, earned himself a place in the record books by getting himself sent off after three seconds into the match against rivals Bashley.

‘I felt hard done-to by the ref’s decision but he thinks it was a red card so I have to take it,’ he said.
‘World record? – it’s not something I’m proud of.’

Afterwards his manager. George McCaffrey described Pratt as a ‘a mild-mannered young man’ and ‘a really nice lad’, which he probably is. However (and this is no criticism at all with regard to David Pratt), has anyone ever heard a manager tell the media that one of his players is actually a thug?

Dressage team
Spare a thought for Simon Laurens who is trying to raise £80,000 if he is to realise his dream of competing in the 2012 Paralympics in London.

I hope that our only-ever Paralympian medal winner raises that sum although in the current economic climate it is a huge ask.

However, as he aims to finish his autobiography, tentatively called: ‘Second Chance’, I am reminded of how he knew, before winning team gold and individual silver in dressage on Ocean Diamond, that he might never again enjoy such a golden opportunity.

‘I didn’t want him to come away having not had a very good time,’ he said. ‘But we had a great trip this morning. The pony is happy and I like happy pony.’

Dressage is a sport for two (horse included), not one, so beware when your rival’s pony is a happy one . . .

A strange feeling
NOT so happy last year, but hoping to make amends in 2009, will be Jersey assistant manager Dave Brodie (or should that be Jersey’s answer to ‘Mystic Meg’?) who sensed during the under-21 Muratti that his side were in for a tough time, even before Guernsey beat them.

This is what he said after Jersey, winning 2-0 with scarcely any time left, were taken to extra time. ‘Guernsey got one back and then I had a strange feeling that they were going to equalise with that late free kick and when their cross cum shot went in at the end it summed the day up for us.’
Revenge will be sweet for the under-21s at Foote’s Lane later this year.

Board meetings
MEANWHILE, what else did 2008 hint at with regard to the future?

First, that no matter what your plans or how enthusiastic you are, there’ll always be someone Out There who wants to start an argument. For no matter what your plans, or how well-intentioned they are, there’ll always be someone who’ll tell you that it should be a different colour, smaller, or situated in someone else’s parish.

Even when Jake Hipwell, president of the Channel Islands Skateboard Association said: ‘Everybody always seems to be complaining about youth crime and youth obesity but if you do not give children somewhere to go, what else are they supposed to do?’ it took Deputy Ben Fox six years and 22 proposed sites before a skatepark was eventually built.

Six years and 22 sites for the relatively small development of a free skateboard arena for kids . . . so what odds would you offer on the Watersplash and its surround ever being turned into Europe’s premier surf park?

Football on streets
Postscript. A few days ago, as I walked through the backstreets of town I watched a few lads kicking a football down our street.

It was a Sunday morning. There were few, if any cars, yet I was angry that three boys should disturb the silence by treating the road as their own.

It was only as I walked through my door that I felt any guilt. For in my youth, at a time when the car population was something like a tenth of what it is today, there were always kids in our neighbourhood kicking a ball ‘in t’alley’.

If there hadn’t been, we would have had no Bobby Charlton, Denis Law or George Best . . .
And then, two days later, I read in the national press that ‘police officers in Cambridgeshire have zeroed in on street football as a priority target for 2009 in their battle to uphold law and order.

‘The force is threatening to use Asbos and other measures to tackle children’s street games in areas of Huntingdon where residents have decided youngsters kicking footballs are spoiling their quality of life.’
Shame on them.

But – in the same paper (different edition) – we are told that help is at hand! – for if you live in Moray, Scotland, you can apply for the position of ‘Street Football Co-ordinator’, at a salary of £19,887 a year with a job description of ‘organising and promoting street football’.

If you didn’t know it was true, you would never have thought to invent it . . .