FOUR LINESMEN BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE

“Concerning goal-line technology, the Board concluded that goal-line technology would not be pursued.”

With a stray comma, a repetition, a conditional and a negative the Federation Internationale de Football Association took a step back from the future.

Sooner not later replays of incidents will become a part of the game but the International Football Association Board bottled it for another year and the World Cup in South Africa will be replay free.

The IFAB oversees the rules of the senior code. Once a year this inobtrusive institution meets to discuss amendments to the 17 laws of football.

The history of the Board is a bore but in a nutshell us Brits put it together in 1882 so we could play each other in the Home championship under the same rules. In 1913 the French, in the guise of FIFA, were allowed to join and in 1958 they were given equal rights. Bloody cheek.

Anyways the four home nations, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have a vote each and FIFA have four votes. It needs six to amend a law.

The rejection of technology was hardly a surprise but its day is coming and it is time to move the goal-line.

Forget cameras on the goal or sensors on the line or an implant in the ball. Forget goal-line technology and embrace the Appeal.

The Appeal is when the captain of each side can challenge the referee’s decision once in a game. The fourth official has a monitor on which he has one minute in which to watch as many replays as can be provided by the broadcaster. If he cannot make up his mind the referee’s original decision stands.

Cards; tackles; disallowed goals; allowed goals; everything is fair game but it one Referral per side per game. The captain, and only the captain, can Appeal and he must do so, verbally, to the referee with 60 seconds of the incident.

The fourth official will watch the replays on a shielded monitor both of which will be supplied by the host broadcaster.

A manager or coach who tries to influence the fourth official or encroaches on the replay technical area will be sent from the field of play.

Like substitutes in the Football League 45 years ago the Appeal or a system like it will chafe the older guard but it is coming and for that they can thank UEFA.

The Union of European Football Associations is conducting a lackadaisical experiment in the Europa League with additional assistant referees stationed next to the goal.

“(They) will provide two extra pairs of eyes to monitor the game and ensure that the Laws of the Game are upheld, informing the referee of incidents of any kind that he may otherwise have missed, particularly in key areas of the field like the penalty area and its surroundings.

They have done nothing but wear tights and watch teams wrestle each other to the ground before corners and free kicks.

The Europa League re-emerged in February and unlike their colleagues who run up and down or all around the goal hangers stand around waiting for something to happen. They needed tights to keep warm.

The Board will meet in May to discuss the Europa League findings. They are unlikely to see the extra eyes experiment as a success.

The view from here has remained unaltered for years. Four assistant referees running the line is the best technology-free solution.

If only the Republic of Ireland had a vote.

RED, DICK AND ENGLAND

On a Thursday afternoon in June 1950, in a World Cup Group 2 match at the Independencia stadium in Belo Horizonte, Joe Gaetens scored the goal heard around the world seven minutes before half time.

The USA held on against an England of Tom Finney, Stan Mortensen, Wilf Mannion and Alf Ramsey and so began a relationship with the game we call football.

Thirty years later the sportswriter Red Smith of the New York Times, a baseball man with no time for football, encountered the world game at the Meadowlands and wrote of the New York Cosmos and the pre-match song and dance,

"When at last the field was left to the players, the quality of entertainment declined somewhat."

Starring for the Cosmos that day were World Cup winning captains Carlos Alberto and Franz Beckanbauer, Holland's Johan Neeskens and the renegade Anglo-Italian Giorgio Chingalia.

They got off lightly.

Dick Young of the tabloid Daily News had heckled Pele in his first Cosmos press conference and thought the game was for, as he put it, Commie pansies.

One won a Pulitzer prize but both articulated how most of their countrymen felt.

Four years later the Cosmos, along with the rest of the North American Soccer League, imploded and punctured football in America.

Thirty years further on and the story has a different lead.

Since the 1990 World Cup in Italy a stream of Americans, mostly goalkeepers with names like Kasey, Brad and Boaz, have flowed though English professional football.

America hosted the show in 1994; the national team reached the last eight in the 2002 and are about to play in their sixth consecutive tournament; Major League Soccer is in its 15th season; where there were hundreds of local teams and clubs there are now hundreds of thousands and millions of American parents ferry their kids to and from endless practise and games.

Football is embedded and it was no surprise when an American friend of a friend attended a recent Arsenal game and needed no introduction to the context of the match or the Premier League. Bill's son wore an Arsenal hat and they had a ball.

Earlier this year Landon Donovan of LA Galaxy raised the bar for US imports with a 13 game star turn on-loan at Everton whose request to keep him was refused.

Donovan is a key member of a side ranked 16 in the world which last year, in the World Cup warm-up tournament, beat European Champions Spain 2-0 in the semi finals and in the final held a 2-0 lead over Brazil before losing 3-2 .

On a Saturday evening in June, in the opening game of Group C at the Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg, the USA play England.

Revenge is a dish best served 60 years cold.

HARRY’S PATCH AND MY WIFE

I love golf almost as much as I hate writing in the first person singular.

On reading those first three words some of you, most of you, will reach for the off key but I could care less.

It is our strength and our weakness. Us golfers are so taken with the game that non-believers fail to mark our card but if you show the slightest, even feigned, curiosity we are your friend, your partner, your golf buddy.

For me, an Open assignment at Royal Birkdale in 1998 turned a professional interest into a consuming passion.

That was the year Mark O’Meara, at the age of 44, supped from the Claret jug and a 17 year old amateur Justin Rose chipped in on the 18th to finish joint fourth. I also saw Tiger Woods in the flesh for the first time.

And I remember it for two other reasons.

On the Saturday evening Lee Westwood left the course at the same time as myself and a colleague were walking to our hotel. He negotiated the crowd in his shiny new Mercedes sports car and despite his shooting an eight over par 78 we exchanged a cheery greeting.

150 yards down the road we stopped to let Westwood enter the drive of his rented house. A sheepish professional golfer was greeted with an equally cheery,

“We beat you!”

And I realised that golf, like horse racing and motor sports, is best watched on television.

In the twelve years since that magical working weekend on the Lancashire coast I have thought about golf roughly once every seven seconds.

Golf is proof of the maxim that the smaller the ball the better the writing. And I should know I have read most of it.

Books and magazines as well as videos were devoured whole and every spare morning, afternoon and evening was spent at the nine hole Central London Golf Centre in Wandsworth endangering fellow addicts and disfiguring the big round ball.

Slowly, painfully slowly, I began to hole the ball in less than double figures and graduated to Beckenham Place Park.

Then I suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange. I gave up work.

Or, more accurately, I went freelance.

My inclination to wear spikes around the BBC newsroom had already been noted and the sports editor was happy to see the back of my Dunlop rainwear. I was pleased to be able to play golf whenever I liked.

Beckenham became my first home which I shared with my pal Mark. He, too, is a sports journalist but we never talked about football, cricket or racing.

It was always golf.

Did you see Tiger last night? (of course). Is that the 150 yard marker?(no, it is a beer can) And do you think Ben Hogan ever shanked one as badly as that? (highly unlikely).

Beckenham is a public course and open to the yet to be converted. Once I overhit an approach shot into the 8th green and nearly creamed a jogger. We saw him again on his second circuit and, as Mark helpfully pointed out, he bore a distinct resemblance to the boxer Nigel Benn. The former middleweight world champion must have been in another world because he pounded past us without a second glance.

For 18 months I mixed rounds of triple figures with occasional work assignments and frequent visits to Enfield for assignations with the one. Eventually the trips north turned into a permanent move and five day membership of the Harry Vardon designed Bush Hill Park.

Then I got married. But within three months she was onside. Or, more accurately, greenside.

Our early married life was up and down although there was also plenty of time for golf.

Caddy No1 soon followed. Jack’s inability to carry a full set restricted the swing for a while but a change of strategy enabled me to make more visits to the golf club even if it meant less time on the course.

Three holes here, a bucket of balls on the driving range there or a one man competition on the putting green kept my hand in and my marriage intact.

Six majors later and we had a bag carrier each. Charlie also slowed down the club head speed but after a polite and considerate wait of four days it was back to the track.

That was three years ago. Juggling golf with family life and work has been interesting but meticulous planning and bouts of begging have allowed me to roam free on Harry’s patch.

But while I was feeling pleased with myself for playing more golf than I had any right to my wife was playing more.

Now, more often than not, it is me left at home begging the boys for a go on their Wii as she heads off for another yet another competition or round with friends.

I have been stymied.

JOBS FOR THE BOYS

The executive from Sky Television looked down at the curriculum vitae in front of him and then looked across the desk.

“You are just the sort of person we are looking for. We like our cricket commentators to have had a good grounding in newspaper journalism before entering broadcasting. Your radio experience will stand you in good stead too. You have a great voice, you know your cricket and you obviously have a way with words. You are hired.”

Yeah, right.

No journalist commentates on Test cricket for Sky. They are all former England players and most are former England captains.

The cricket correspondents of the BBC, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Observer are all former England players.

The Independent employed a former Test cricketer in Angus Fraser before he stepped down last year to become managing director of cricket at Middlesex and the face of cricket on Channel 4 is a former captain of Hampshire.

Young newspaper reporters or local radio broadcasters hoping to cover cricket should prepare themselves for a lifetime in the shires or learn how to write for the tabloids.

And if they do make it to international cricket they had better have skin thicker than a callus on a spinning finger.

There is, it must be said, a long and sometimes honourable tradition of cricketers taking up the mic after their playing days.

Two of the best examples captained New South Wales.

The late Alan McGilvray never played Test cricket but he was a shrewd skipper and once out-thought Don Bradman.

McGilvray worked hard at his second career, developed a unique style and became an outstanding radio broadcaster.

Richie Benaud led Australia with distinction and replicated that success as a journalist and broadcaster. The English summer has never sounded the same since he confined himself to broadcasting in Australia.

And, in this day and age, the BBC’s Jonathan Agnew and Channel 4’s Mark Nicholas do a fine job.

Examples of cricketers who became excellent writers are harder to recall but readers of The Times say Michael Atherton is one and Steve James of the Sunday Telegraph has a growing reputation.

One or two cricketers may have the talent, skills and dedication to become outstanding journalists but most owe their employment to their prowess on the pitch.

What does it matter if former cricketers take all the top jobs? They bring expertise and insight to a complicated game and did not the Sports Journalists Association recently acclaim Atherton as Sports Writer of the Year and vote Sky’s cricket programme as the best on TV?

It matters because the long form of cricket is dying on its spikes and it is no coincidence that the standard of cricket writing and broadcasting is going the same way.

Attendances at four day county matches are pitiful and viewing figures for non-Ashes Test matches are dwindling.

Cricket has had to invent a new format to prevent financial implosion.

Twenty 20 has taken off in England and India with new leagues, sellout crowds and exciting games.

It has brought a new and much-needed audience to cricket; one that wants three hours of bang bang instead of four or five days of strategy which more often than not ends in a draw.

And how many of the former cricketers hired by television, radio and newspapers as commentators and correspondents has ever played Twenty20? Not one. Not a single one.

Their expertise is redundant.

Where is the next EW Swanton, Neville Cardus, Frank Keating, Brian Johnston, John Arlott or Gideon Haigh going to come from?

Given the experience of one talented broadcaster it is a surprise that anyone would want to try.

Arlo White was a rising star on BBC Radio 5 Live. His enthusiasm and style caught the ear of Test Match Special (TMS) producer Adam Mountford and he made his debut in 2006. The carping soon began.

Mike Selvey, also a former England player, was dropped from the TMS team two years ago and said,

“ Once upon a time TMS was part of a great tradition of BBC radio. But they are bringing in commentators with little knowledge of the game, especially of the cadences of Test match cricket.”

Sports news hound Charles Sale, ever eager to pursue the Daily Mail’s anti- BBC agenda, weighed in with constant sniping.

And Michael Henderson, a vituperative snob, wrote in the Daily Telegraph,

“White has some talent as a presenter. But, where cricket is concerned TMS should look elsewhere. There is a world of difference in tone and mood between Norwich against Coventry and a Test match, and White does not appear to understand it. His grasp of cricket is shaky, and TMS prides itself on being rooted in the game. Mistakes can be forgiven; ignorance cannot.”

During the West Indies tour of England last year White told me he was doing his dream job but described the press box as a nest of vipers.

His confidence undermined and dream shattered White resigned from the BBC and has gone to work in Seattle where the school you went to is of no consequence.

Selvey, Sale and Henderson will claim a victory over dumbing down but for this observer it is an endorsement of the old boy network and a reflection of why the longer form of cricket is failing to engage a new audience.

It is cosy, cliquey and closed.