Sporting matters

Good evening.

Hope you have all had good weeks and been enjoying the continued good weather. Perhaps the only people who have not enjoyed the fine spring sunshine and heat of the past few days were those brave souls in some cases dressed up in foliage or superhero costumes pounding 26.5 miles of London's streets in the name of charitable cause. Well done to everyone who raised money for their cause of choice. And suitably, I thought that this week I would focus my blog output predominantly on sporting matters from various arenas. Seconds out, round one. Ding ding.

1. PFA nominations show the case for technology
For those that follow the beautiful game, you often hear the argument that technology should be used to help with making the right decisions in times when the pace of the game and players' adeptness at fooling the match officials becomes more and more of an issue. Indeed, Harry Redknapp advocated this motion just yesterday in response to Manchester United being the beneficiaries of a fortunate penalty decision. Not that you will hear any complaints about that decision in this blog!

However, the most damning case for the use of modern technology in football can be demonstrated by this year's PFA Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year nominations. If you have not seen the awards shortlists, the Player of the Year accolade is being contested by five Manchester United players, Ryan Giggs, Edwin Van Der Sar, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Cristiano Ronaldo. The sole non-Manchester United nominee is Steven Gerrard. This presents a strange problem in as much as any Manchester United player that votes will be forced to vote for Gerrard as they cannot vote for one of their own players. It is because of this that Gerrard is currently the bookmakers' favourite to win the award, despite the fact that he has been injured for a few weeks now. I rather expect there to be numerous abstentions and spoilt ballot papers around Old Trafford way to stop the Liverpool captain securing a runaway victory.

Quite apart from Manchester United's domination of the Player of the Year shortlist, it seems ridiculous that in times when technology can be used to collect the votes that such an antiquated mode of voting and drawing up the nominees is used because this invariably means that it is not the best player over the whole season that wins the award, but the best player up until the end of January when there are still four months of the season to run and no trophies have been decided. I like to see players awarded for making a tangible difference to their team between winning and losing, but these nominees were drawn up before anyone knew who was winning what and therefore knew who the difference makers were.

Now, admittedly there would be certain obstacles. Footballers as we know are not always renowned for being the sharpest tools in the box and when it comes to technology, the light switch is about as much innovation as some of the more Luddite minded can handle. There is also the problem that the further down the football pyramid you go, so the football season can finish earlier. If you are a member of the PFA though, you are entitled to vote for the Footballer of the Year whether you ply your trade in the Premier League or in the Screwfix League. Therefore, expecting votes to be cast in the final week of the Premier League season would be unrealistic as by then the semi-professional footballers will be partying in Ibiza or riding a camel in the Egyptian desert.

But these barriers can be overcome. Each club has its own PFA representative. All they need to do is input the votes on to a secure Internet or Intranet site on the PFA website. This would not involve collecting forms or even so much as the expense of a first class stamp. It would just mean one person sitting in front of a computer and inputting their team mate's voting preferences. OK, it would contravene the concept of a secret ballot, but knowing who your team mate's favourite footballers of the season are is hardly classified or confidential information.

And for the technophobes, there would be no problem. Just get someone from the PFA to come in after training and show the PFA reps how to use the software system. That way, voting need not take place until the final few weeks of the season when the players who really have demonstrated their quality over the whole campaign can ensure they come out on top.

Looking at the nominees, there is a strong emphasis on the Manchester United players that were pivotal in their team's period of over three months where they did not concede a league goal with Edwin Van Der Sar, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic all nominated. Vidic's nomination is certainly warranted as he has been a defensive colossus for United for the vast majority of the season and he was consistently excellent throughout the time United did not concede a goal. Ferdinand as the other half of United's established central defensive partnership is also worthy of inclusion as United have been shaky when he has not played. Van Der Sar's choice, however, is a case of a goalkeeper getting the glory for his defence's achievements. Van Der Sar has not had a bad season by any means, but he has been prone to error as the season has worn on and so his inclusion is because of the plaudits he was receiving at the time the shortlist was drawn up.

United's two other nominees, Ryan Giggs and Cristiano Ronaldo would also polarise opinion with their inclusion. From reading the sports pages of the newspapers, I have been aware for some time that there is a strong contingent among the writers on the game who want to see Ryan Giggs receive the Player of the Year award because of what he has achieved throughout his career, in what they see as a season when there has been no standout candidate. This is all very worthy and corinthian and I am a huge fan of Ryan Giggs's myself. However, Giggs winning this award would be a triumph for sentimentality over realism. Giggs has played in a dozen of United's league matches this season and although he scored a virtuoso and priceless goal in a 1-0 win at West Ham in February, that is not reason enough to give him an award supposedly there to recognise achievement over a whole season. Nonetheless, Giggs should be applauded for his continued importance to Manchester United as the face of the experience.

In Cristiano Ronaldo's case, he has won this award for the past two seasons in a landslide. There simply was no other candidate to challenge him for the accolade last season, given that he scored 42 goals from his right wing vantage point, 42 goals that went such a long way towards United winning the Premier League and Champions League. In comparison, Ronaldo's performances this season have not hit the same heights. He came into the campaign with an injury after the European Championships and there have been times this season when the game has appeared to pass him by. That said, Ronaldo is still the top goalscorer in the league this season and in the past two months has often proven to be United's difference maker, even if his contribution has not been as consistently good this season as it was last season. But then, could he ever really expect to match last season's contribution?

There are some notable absentees from the list of nominees that was drawn up. From a Manchester United perspective, it is surprising that Wayne Rooney has been overlooked for both Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year, for which he would still be eligible. Rooney turned the game on its head at the weekend with his performance in the 2nd half against Tottenham and that was not an atypical performance by him over the course of this season as he has continued to energise United. I suppose people have overlooked him for Young Player of the Year because they do not realise he is still eligible as he has been around for so long!

Elsewhere, Frank Lampard has been head and shoulders Chelsea's best player throughout the season and can consider himself unfortunate not to make the cut. Liverpool have had their share of performers this season, as well as the nominated Steven Gerrard. Fernando Torres has been in imperious form in the past two months but missed much of the first part of the season which is why he is missing. Midfielder Xabi Alonso has done much to warrant a mention after the season began with him wondering if he even had a future at Anfield. Meanwhile, in a season which has seen them reach the FA Cup final, Everton could have been represented by the ever consistent Tim Cahill and rock solid Phil Jagielka and may wonder why Belgian midfielder Fellaini did not get on the Young Player of the Year list.

On the young player side, of those nominated Ashley Young and Stephen Ireland look like the best two candidates having been the best players for Aston Villa and Manchester City respectively over the course of the season. Young was instrumental in Villa's push for a top four finish up until a few weeks ago and so I think he should be the best candidate to win this award. Young winning Young Player of the Year sounds right too! Nonetheless, Ireland has shone like a beacon in the Man City team this season, when others that continually failed to deliver. As well as the aforementioned Rooney and Fellaini, Arsenal's Samir Nasri would seem to be the most glaring absentee from this list. Spurs's Aaron Lennon has been in fine form since the turn of the year and is another worthy of consideration.

Personally, my choices for these two awards are Nemanja Vidic and Ashley Young. However, the opinions of professional footballers can often be very different to the ones that the supporter has and so a surprise result should not be ruled out. For the record though, here are my players of the season for each of the Premier League's teams this campaign.

Arsenal: Robin Van Persie
Aston Villa: Ashley Young
Blackburn: Stephen Warnock
Bolton: Matthew Taylor
Chelsea: Frank Lampard
Everton: Tim Cahill
Fulham: Brede Hangeland
Hull: Michael Turner
Liverpool: Xabi Alonso
Manchester City: Stephen Ireland
Manchester United: Nemanja Vidic
Middlesbrough: Sanli Tuncay
Newcastle: Jonas Gutierrez
Portsmouth: Glen Johnson
Stoke: James Beattie
Sunderland: Kenwyne Jones
Tottenham: Aaron Lennon
West Brom: Chris Brunt
West Ham: Valon Behrami
Wigan: Antonio Valencia

2. If the product's good, why change anything?
While football is very much my first sporting love, the first sport I remember watching on television when I was a child was snooker. I was captivated by the game at a very young age, the table, the mixture of colours and the players' outfits. All in all, it just made for a brilliant television spectacle. Indeed, in these days of HD television where every small point of detail shows up in the television picture, there is possibly no other sport that is made so perfectly for a television audience than the green baize.

So, I am currently enjoying one of the finest sporting fortnights of the year with the World Snooker Championship currently taking place at the iconic Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. The intimate venue may not win any awards for being the prettiest venue in the world of sport, nor is it even the largest setting for a snooker tournament. But the memories associated with the place are such that the World Championship just would not be the same if it was held anywhere else. Because I remember watching the tournament as a young child and now continue to do so, the World Championship has a special place in my heart and I always look forward with anticipation to the tournament every year, although due to work I do not get to see all that much play these days. Apart from visiting the New Wembley and seeing a test match at Lord's, I cannot think of any sporting venue I would like to take in more.

My first memories of snooker were in the 1980s during snooker's so called "golden era". Back then, snooker was huge because there was blanket coverage of the game on television back at a time when there were only four television channels and the game was full of larger than life characters who would people on the edge of their seat with their antics, even if the quality of their play was not anything special. The first final I remember was the 1985 renewal which Dennis Taylor famously won on the final black in the early hours of the morning against Steve Davis. I can't quite remember if I stayed up right to the end, but I certainly remember Taylor sinking the black and I was none too happy as I idolised Steve Davis at the time.

Such heady days. I mention all this because currently if you believe the press and you believe Ronnie O' Sullivan, the game is dying. I dispute this because I think the people that proclaim snooker's golden era as being the 1980s are not really snooker fans at all. The game had plenty of characters back in the days of Davis's dominance, but aside from Davis, Alex Higgins at his absolute best, Jimmy White, Dennis Taylor and Cliff Thorburn, none of the players from that era would last five minutes in the game now. The evidence is damning. Last year, there were 68 century breaks made during the World Championship. Go back to the 1980s and you would be lucky to get even half that over the duration of the tournament.

Sure, everyone remembers Hurricane Higgins making crazy shots, head butting officials and soiling plants rather than potting them and they remember Jimmy White's years of gallant failure and Bill Werbeniuk breaking wind as he stretched over the table, but how did any of this add up to good snooker? Willie Thorne is somehow regarded as one of snooker's great characters because he had a shiny bald head and Dennis Taylor seemed to be more famous for his upside down rimmed glasses than for actually winning the World Championship. But people remember these people because they were on their television screens.

The problem snooker has now is partly down to lifestyle choice and partly down to perception. In the modern climate, there are so many other things people can be usefully doing other than watching snooker and they are spoilt for choice in terms of their viewing options. The casual follower is going to be less inclined to tune in now than they were in the past. It also does not help that snooker seems to have a negative perception in some people's eyes. "There aren't enough characters any more" they will cry. "Things aren't like they used to be" others will say and then there will be those that say "I'm only really interested in Ronnie, the rest of them are a bunch of faceless robots". People with that attitude won't be tuning in for the rest of the World Championship with Ronnie having crashed and burnt in round 2.

As a more avid fan of snooker, I do not see things this way. Yes, it is right that Ronnie O' Sullivan is snooker's biggest draw card, he is to his sport what Tiger Woods is to golf or what Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are to tennis, the players that put bums on seats. When they swing a club or serve a tennis ball, the public are hooked. O' Sullivan is captivating not just because of the brilliance of his play but his unpredictability. On his day, he can destroy anybody that is in his path, but on other darker days, the main person he destroys is himself and his frustrations and character flaws make him the genius he is. There is no doubt that O' Sullivan's defence of his world title ending so early in one sense is bad news for the tournament because he keeps people interested.

In saying this though, this does a disservice to everyone else. In fact, with O' Sullivan out of the tournament, it makes this year's World Championship compulsive viewing because just about everyone left in the tournament is capable of winning it. The new bookmakers' favourite Stephen Maguire is testament to this because he has been made favourite despite the fact he has never even made the final at the Crucible before. There are plenty of fantastic players wherever you go, players with contrasting styles, but who each have their own merits.

The quality of the play now compared to 15 or 20 years ago is much better. Back in the 1980s, you knew that Steve Davis would have to play quite badly not to win the tournament, such was his superiority over his rivals. In the 1990s, there was slightly more competition coming through but for the early part of the decade at least, no-one realistically expected anyone of being capable of stopping Stephen Hendry. Compare and contrast this to now when the picture generally is that if O' Sullivan is in the mood, he can clean up, but if he is not then there are so many players in the field who could win the tournament. The pace of the game is much faster too, rather than the pedestrian nature of the players back in the days of Terry Griffiths and Cliff Thorburn.

The trouble is that snooker is not in the public consciousness so much any more. Apart from people have greater choices of programmes to be watching, the game is not on terrestrial TV as much as it used to be and there are fewer tournaments because of the current economic situation with sponsorship harder to come by. People are looking at ways of jazzing up the game and some have said that snooker should copy the template of darts with silly nicknames for the players and grandiose entries to the arena.

While it would be worth looking at ways of making snooker more accessible to a younger audience, I do think that people need to realise that the audiences for darts and snooker are different and if you rebrand snooker too much towards those with a shorter attention span, it will alienate the people most loyal to the game. Darts is a sport with its origins in the pub and the people that watch the game live treat the occasion like they would if they were watching in a pub. In essence though, it is a sport of precision accuracy played by middle aged, obese and sweaty men who can add up. Snooker might not require supreme fitness but it is an endurance test, a game where sublime tactical and technical play is required and a test of one's mental strength, resilience and powers of concentration. If people feel there aren't enough characters in snooker, it is because they do not understand the level of professionalism and dedication in snooker, something that is rare in darts unless you are Phil Taylor.

People continue to bemoan the lack of characters in snooker but in fact there are several capivating characters who will enjoy the limelight in Ronnie O' Sullivan's absence from the rest of the World Championship. The so-called "Jester from Leicester" Mark Selby is always good fun around the table and is full of wisecracks and humour, but also possesses a deadly competitive streak and can lull his opponents into a false sense of security. World number 2 Stephen Maguire is an unfulfilled talent. He has all the talent in the world but his temperament has been known to fail him at key moments and could have the makings of another Jimmy White in not reaching his full potential.

"Wizard of Wishaw" John Higgins is something of a veteran now and he takes the Steve Davis role of being fairly devoid of emotion at the table but being a silent assassin who plays his best snooker under pressure. Beyond them, there are the outrageous potting talents of Aussie Neil Robertson and Welshman Ryan Day and the young pups Mark Allen and Jamie Cope, who both seem to be capable of potting balls off lampshades. Then there's the quarter final to really look forward to between hometown boy Shaun Murphy and seven times world champion Stephen Hendry, who at 40 years old, seems only to play for this tournament now.

Times have moved on from snooker's golden era and realistically, it can never expect to enjoy the same amount of exposure in this country that it once had. But the sport is actually in pretty rude health at the moment with a talented crop of young players coming through and some seasoned pros still eager to prove they can cut at the highest level and the game's global profile is extending, particularly in the Far East but also increasingly in the Middle East.

Just tonight I watched two thrilling matches in the evening session with a match on one table which was a masterclass in break building and winning frames in one visit, while on the other table, there was a tight match between two players with little between them but where mistakes and tension led to frames being stolen from a seemingly unassailable position. Ultimately, if the product is good, as the quality of the snooker is, then it has got a chance. All the glamour and gimmicks in the world just add up to excess packaging.

As for who is going to win the tournament, well, I feel that the draw has opened up nicely for Mark Selby to win his first world crown. He was runner-up to John Higgins in 2007 and he could well face the Scot in the quarter-finals this time. A semi-final place would then await against either Ryan Day or O' Sullivan's conqueror Mark Allen. In the bottom half of the draw, I fancy Shaun Murphy to get past Stephen Hendry in the battle of the former champions. This would likely set him up with a semi against either his old adversary Stephen Maguire, last year's runner-up Ali Carter or Australian swashbuckler Neil Robertson. Maguire blows hot and cold but maybe, just maybe, this is his best opportunity of at least making the final.

3. Haye was not boxing clever
I would not describe myself as the biggest fight fan but more of a casual observer. The glory days of the 1990s are long gone as the vast majority of boxing's showpiece events are now shown on Pay Per View television and at inconvenient times in the morning in order to suit the American audience that comprises much of the world television audience. However, the sport did enter my consciousness this week with the actions of David Haye, heavyweight boxer from South London.

Haye is a world title fighter in the heavyweight section and is shortly going to be fighting the younger of the two Klitschko brothers, both of whom have held world title belts in their time. Haye is known as a cocky individual and is not averse to talking the talk, but in fairness to him, has also walked the walk by holding a world title belt. However, Haye overstepped the boundaries of acceptable sporting banter while promoting his latest bout.

It seems to be as much of a tradition in boxing as the pre-match weigh-in and the staring each other out contest that boxers feel compelled to trash talk one another in the pre-fight press conference and sure enough, Haye did just that by turning up at the press conference wearing a T-shirt which bore an image of the dismembered heads of his opponent and his brother on the front of it. Haye would later say that this tactic was deliberate because he wanted to make Klitschko angry at the insult he was making and therefore make Klitschko indisciplined when it came to the actual fight.

Maybe I'm being slightly old fashioned here, but is this really necessary? I do not recall Joe Calzaghe behaving in this way before any of his 46 professional fights and yet he did not lose any competitive edge. People might mention Muhammad Ali, but the great man would never have aimed such a metaphorically low punch in order to get his point across. What Haye did was cowardly and it was a cheap shot which could in fact rebound on him. Quite apart from possibly facing censure, Klitschko will definitely need no incentive when he goes out to fight Haye, he just needs to keep a photo of Haye wearing the T-shirt on his dressing room wall to pump him up good and proper.

Mind games seem all the rage at the moment with football managers doing their best to put one another off just to grab the smallest competitive advantage. But what does it all achieve when all is said and done? Words are just words, they can come back and bite you when they are not backed up by actions and Haye in trash talking Klitschko and choosing to be confrontational by wearing a T-shirt that was in such poor taste has unwittingly put extra pressure on himself now to win. Maybe he thrives on that kind of pressure, I don't know, but I think his cornerman will need to prepare himself for a busy evening when he gets in the ring with Klitschko.