Watch Out

“1-0? It wasn’t 1-0, it was 0-0, so we just start again.”

“No, it was 1-0. I scored just before we stopped . . .”

“But you can’t count that!” “Why not? It went in.”

“But that’s sick!” “It was a goal. You just stopped to watch the plane crash — that’s sick.”

And so on and so forth. Well, apparently things became quite heated and eventually it was agreed to resume the game there and then, 20 minutes gone and 1-0. And the wreckage? Steve assured me that the police tape only really put the section on one side, between the penalty box and the touchline, out of bounds, therefore “if it went under the tape, it was a throw-in”.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, the fixture continued up to and around the wreckage of a crashed plane on the pitch. The game finished 2-2, which, naturally, opened up the whole argument again about the legitimacy of the opening goal and its effect on the final score. Steve wrenched up his on-air delivery a notch. “Yeah, but see, the thing was, Dan, their first goal was about five miles offside, so we could have knocked both goals off and called it 1-1 — but they wouldn’t have it. I mean, you can’t have it both ways, can you?” I see. Did I mention there were two fatalities in this story? Finally, I put to him a question that I think we all wanted to ask. “Steve,” I said in a low, reassuring, Dr Frasier Crane sort of way, “Steve, it was you who took advantage of events to nick that goal, wasn’t it? It was you, Steve. It’s OK, you’re among friends here, we understand.”

There was a pause. “No . . . no, of course not,” he stammered, “it was my mate . . . um . . . Nicky. I mean, I couldn’t do something like that . . .”

Oh, but Steve, you could. And you know what’s truly awful? In the same circumstances and given the right fixture . . . maybe we all could.

Curse of the phone cameras

FOOTBALL GROUNDS ARE GETTING quieter and the reason is because every nitwit fan in Britain now tries to capture even the most routine incident during a match on their rotten mobile phone cameras.

Vaguely well-known players come across to take a throw-in — out come the phones. Over comes a cross — out come the phones. Minor scuffle in the centre circle — out come the phones, in go the zooms.

As for penalties, just take a look at the “toward-goal” angle of a spot kick the next time one is televised. Behind the net, behold the solid wall of Nokia nincompoops. Thousands of jaded lunatics, not experiencing the real world in front of them, but collecting it preciously via a murky 1in x 1in screen.

I have a friend who actually tries not to get too carried away when a goal goes in because he doesn’t want to lose the framing on his shot. He even slowly “pans around” the stands to “capture” the whole moment. He used to be a real hugger and screamer. Now it’s like trying to celebrate with Dickie Attenborough.

I have further witnessed once raucous, carefree songsters cowed and embarrassed after hearing themselves distorting the sound on their playbacks.

The awful truth is that these days, the moment the ball crosses the line, even those who are not peeing away their pixels for the ages are absenting themselves by calling up a friend to pass on all the details.

It’s simply not enough to feel a football match any more, you have to archive it, to own it.

Fifty years from now, youngsters will see film of goals from the last century and ask: “Grandad, what’s all that noise?” And we will explain about the Shed and the Kop and Cold Blow Lane. And probably, the little ones will look on in puzzlement and eventually say: “But grandad, how could everybody have been so unprofessional?”

Explore Columnists

• Graham Spiers