Football Thoughts

Today is, for many, the start of the football season in England. Although Football League and 'non-league' clubs have been playing for a week or so today the Barclays Premier League clubs kick off their season. For the next 11 months (it's a World Cup year remember) it'll be live football on television and on the radio and internet 7 days a week.

Heaven.

Except, back in the day, football seemed better. Games would be confined to maybe 3 days a week: the traditional Saturday afternoon fixtures with occasional midweek games on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening. There were no 'live' matches of course - back then we relied on crackly audio courtesy of Radio 2 medium wave. At 12 o'clock on a Saturday and 7 o'clock on a midweek match night Radio 2 would 'donate' their medium wave frequency for buildup and second half commentary from the big match of the day. I have fond memories of listening to a European Cup match featuring Liverpool away in Hungary against a team called Videoton: 'Video Town' as I was later to discover it exotically translated to. Fond memories indeed.

Live football was available to those of us with commitment and dedication: courtesy of Ceefax and Teletext. For 2 hours I'd sit glued to the television screen as the fixtures from my team's division - split across 4 'pages' usually - looped around. Each page would be displayed for about a minute before being replaced with the next. Just the scores you understand - no comments, no indication as to how the teams were playing, no stats showing shots on target, assists, corners ... just the scores.

Imagine the excitement, the sense that we were entering a new age of information, when Ceefax enhanced the service by displaying the names of players who had been sent off. Exciting times, I've got goosebumps just thinking about it.

I developed certain routines, traditions if you will, over the many years of watching Ceefax - for Ceefax was my preference over Teletext, which I always suspected was updated marginally slower - with the aim of improving my teams prospects.

I'd never allow myself to change the page to check out another division - who knew what might happen while I was looking away; I'd count out loud between the changing of the pages, believing that if I stopped, my team would suffer. For really important matches - usually relegation six-pointers - I'd attempt to hold my breath as the pages looped around only allowing myself to breath when my teams score was displayed.

It may have helped - who knows?

There was an 'in vision' option as part of the service which placed a small 'letterbox' at the bottom of the screen where goal flashes were displayed while you carried on watching your television programme. I dabbled with it but ultimately felt it showed a lack of commitment.

Nowadays, Saturday afternoons are still spent watching TV - only now we have reporters at every ground to update us as games develop, former players in the studio commenting on the days top matches, and a score ticker running across the screen informing us the very instant a goal is scored.

Football fans have never had it so good. Apparently.

Some day I'll blog about long summers spent 'watching' Test Match cricket via Ceefax - 8 hours a day for 5 days. Now that took a level of dedication that you rarely see in young people these days.