FA Cup final worthy of respect in an era when money counts too much

It’s FA Cup final weekend. Traditionally one of the blockbusters of the English sporting calendar. At least it used to be. In these days of money, money, money it seems to have become devalued. But to those of us of a certain vintage, it will always hold a special place in our hearts. Even if your team is not involved – and Blackburn Rovers haven’t been in the Wembley showpiece since a calamitous 3-0 defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1960 – it is still a major drawcard. It used to bring the curtain down an English season, so that we could all get on with watching some cricket before the whole thing started all over again in August. Not anymore. The final of the overblown, bloated European Champions League takes place in June – the same month that Rovers’ players report back for pre-season training. And out in Oz, we have Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur in Sydney playing post-campaign friendlies against Sydney FC. That’s a new one. What’s that all about? Football used to have a close season. Now it seems never-ending. And all this in a week were the hideous reptilian dictator Herr Blatter hangs on for another term as FIFA chief despite the stench of galling corruption charges among the organisation’s big wigs uncovered by no less than the FBI. Blatter is so sleazy he must sweat liquid peanut butter. So I will use the FA Cup final as an excuse for a potential return to more innocent days – and sit there wondering why Rovers aren’t there. Again. We are actually the only club to have won the FA Cup three times on the run. Admittedly, it was in Victorian times, but it’s still in the record books. And I have various memories of Cup experiences with Rovers, coming across everybody from the big boys like Manchester United and Liverpool to non-League opposition such as Matlock Town and Kidderminster Harriers. My first recollection of an FA Cup final is watching the 1963-64 as an eight-year-old on the box when West Ham United beat Preston North End, who featured a 17-year-old Howard Kendall. I remember thinking “Jeez, if Preston can make it to a final, why can’t Rovers?’. I have been wondering that every year ever since. We came close in the Mark Hughes years, with semi-final defeats against Arsenal at Cardiff and Chelsea at Old Trafford. But it wasn’t meant to be. As a kid, FA Cup final coverage started on the TV at breakfast and rolled on from there. It was mad. And the razzmatazz was on both channels – ITV and BBC. Two rival stations covering one match. Crazy. In among it all was FA Cup It’s a Knock-out, cameras outside both teams’ respective hotels and interviews with supposed celebrity fans. High-level kitsch. But I, and many more of my generation, lapped it all up. Unless I was playing cricket, when I used to yell out to spectators to find what the score was as I was fielding. I can’t imagine being so interested as a neutral these days. It’s that kind of occasion. And sometimes the lesser lights make it through – remember Sunderland in 1973, Coventry City in 1987 and Wigan Athletic spoiling it for spoilt brats Manchester City just a couple of seasons ago. The two non-league encounters for me came when Rovers were travelling as third-class citizens in the old Division Three when we had to enter the competition in round one. In 1974-75, a 4-1 away win against Matlock Town in November ’74 was still something to go doolalee about. I remember, having recently started my Birmingham University days, that my hitch-hiking era had just begun. So following a night’s doss on a student floor at Jim Chadwick’s commune in Levenshulme after seeing Jethro Tull in Manchester, I set off for the Derbyshire hills. I never even thought of not getting a lift and potentially missing the match. I duly got there in good time and bumped into such Rovers teenage stalwart followers as Norm Hartley, Pat Moulden, Suret Warburton and Dave Ellison. Trouble is, a lot of pubs seemed to have run low on beer cos of the heavy Rovers following. The opening goal by Don Martin was celebrated with pure pandemonium under some rickety stand roof and there were no giant-killing act. Rovers were though. The pre-match lack of alcohol was made up for afterwards. I grabbed a lift back to Manchester off Al Denby and Anthony ‘Blod’ Strange, who supplied the Carlsberg Special Brew. Now that was quite a heavy drop in those days, so when Blod virtually passed out, I finished off the last bottle. The trip to Kidderminster in 1979 saw Howard Kendall’s promotion-bound side see off a potential hazard with 2-0 win. Again, the spectators’ facilities were spartan. This time there was a constant hint of violence in the air with West Midlands hoodlums roaming the vicinity trying to organise not-so-welcoming confrontations with fans of a genuine footballing pedigree. But me and big Jim Chadwick had enough street cred and common sense to avoid any unnecessary alarms. Jim had even survived a near side-road hassle in a vehicular collision as he was swigging some gin and tonic from behind the wheel. As I say, different times. So the FA Cup has it all ­– from non-league mudheaps to palatial Wembley. As Aston Villa and Arsenal walk out tonight, they will have taken whatever route they needed to reach the final. I’ll listen to the singing of “Abide with Me” then settle down to watch the action. And once more, ponder why Rovers have not made it. Maybe next year…

England remember to how to enjoy themselves with Trevor Bayliss set to take the reins

What a difference a week makes. On the eve of the first cricket Test between England and New Zealand at Lord’s, I was feeling sorry for the potential incumbent coach Jason Gillespie. Even an Aussie didn’t deserve to take over such a basket case team as England had become. The Kevin Pietersen saga just would not go away and England seemed to have missed a great chance to have fuelled an admittedly overcooked box office draw by not recalling the errant and seemingly unloved genius. And the Kiwis were coming over the horizon, ready to inflict further pain on us hapless Poms. At 30 for four on the first morning, things were going all too much according to the dismal script. But somewhere in between times, England turned things on their head. In a classic Test match, they discovered the thrill of enjoying themselves again. During the last two horror visits down under – the 5-0 Ashes wipe out and the recent one-day World Cup debacle – most of the players looked as though they would have had more fun digging roads for a living than actually playing cricket in the Antipodes. But now it’s a case of bring on the second Test at Headingley. And the coaching situation has taken just as severe a twist with “Dizzy’ Gillespie – everyone’s favourite for the job – being outflanked by another Aussie, Trevor Bayliss. I stayed up through the night to watch the Lord’s finale on the box and could not believe it as the Bayliss development was thrown in among the commentators as some virtual bizarre aside. It seems that it’s going to happen. What a tumultuous turnaround. It was a joy to watch the Lord’s crowd lap up the last day events. Even now, it’s only England who know that they can sell out a Test venue on the fifth day. Admittedly the grounds are smaller but in Oz, everybody of an Anglo persuasion jokes that the home supporters have come dressed as the invisible men. Such are the countless banks of empty seats. Meanwhile, the late night cricketing viewing will be spiced up even more when Michael Clarke and his cohorts begin their Test series in the Caribbean soon against the West Indies. The turgid tracks prepared over there for the recent 1-1 series against England hint that things may become hard work for the Aussies. It may be a taxing assignment before they head to the old country for the Ashes collision. After the events of the last week, I would be hesitant to predict what will happen. The Aussies will start favourites but there are a few of ‘em are approaching old-timer status, so maybe if things don’t go well early on, it may get interesting. But first there is another Test against New Zealand. After the opening encounter I just wish things could go on for longer. A two-Test series is hardly worth the bother. Things are only just getting started after a humdinger of an opener. The Kiwis deserve better. They have brought their barnstorming brand of cricket to Blighty and played their part in a classic Test. They deserve a full summer to keep things boiling over. Alas, we will just have to make do with the second instalment at Headingley. But that promises to be great fun. And on Gillespie’s home ground in his role as coaching mentor at Yorkshire. Wonder what he thinks now. What a mad week…

Kevin Pietersen mess highlights English sport’s failure to accommodate genuine class

You have to wonder how everyone’s favourite candidate to take over the coaching job of the England cricket team must be feeling. Why would one of Adelaide’s hallowed sons, Jason Gillespie, want to bother? He has worked wonders with Yorkshire, the team from the wrong side of the Pennines, and now the England job is apparently his for the taking.  He would be walking into a madhouse. Little over a week ago, England dismissed coach Peter Moores. There was no warning. I know Jim Chadwick, cricket-loving guru of the Rossendale Valley, would have approved. Jim never liked Moores from his days as Lancashire coach. Too much time behind the computer, said Jim. Not enough common sense. And perhaps there is some merit in Jim’s opinions. Maybe Moores was totally out of his depth at international level. But since then we have had the Kevin Pietersen saga. It is like the Moores sacking was over in an instant and forgotten. And what a mess. Pietersen may be hard to handle but he is box office. Between them, new ECB chairman Colin Graves, incoming chief executive Tom Harrison and director of cricket Andrew Strauss have sent out conflicting messages about what Pietersen had to do to get back into the England fold. A shambles. As Andrew Flintoff said: “Kevin may be high maintenance, but so was I.” Surely this backroom conglomerate could have worked something out. Never mind the British election, the main talking point all week has been Kevin Pietersen. Even the BBC’s highbrow current affairs/politics programme Newsnight had a studio debate about the Pietersen affair. Yet English sport has never had way of handling problem performers. As my old mate from my Sunday Times days Rob Steen recounts in his brilliant book The Mavericks: English football when flair wore flares the establishment has never got to grips with footballing genius. England failed to even qualify for the 1974 and 1978 World Cups yet had under-employed magicians such as Stan Bowles, Tony Currie, Charlie George, Alan Hudson, Peter Osgood and Frank Worthington. Rob was right. Add to that list Duncan McKenzie, who Big Jim rates as the best player ever to wear a Blackburn Rovers shirt. A big call as Duncan was only there for just over a season. But I well remember his back-flick goal at Mansfield in 1980 during our promotion run-in surge. Out of this world. Great day out. Thanks, Dunc. Beetroot butties on the coach down to the East Midlands courtesy of Shaun Gill. And while English cricket is messing things up beyond belief, never mind the Ashes. What about the Kiwis. It’s an insult to play New Zealand in a two-Test afterthought before the Aussies arrive. It’s greed, greed, greed. I would rather watch a five-Test series v New Zealand than a “hurried” Ashes renunion. Australia were last in England for an Ashes action two years ago. It’s supposed to be four. So what’s going on? After back to back series to accommodate the one-day World Cup it is diluting a great sporting rivalry. Meanwhile Pietersen will be sitting on the sidelines. It could have been such fun. Maybe Gillespie will sort things out. Good luck…

Watford and Cherries move up in unlikely footballing scenario

The curtain comes down on another English football season for the lesser lights. That is for those of us who follow clubs outside the glory-glory land of the Premier League. Yet the Championship is so unpredictable that unfancied outfits such as Watford and AFC Bournemouth have already booked their places among the elite next season. When you consider how many so-called sleeping giants are engaged in the week to week conflicts, it is no mean feat. But what lies ahead for the lucky social climbers? Until a few weeks ago the bottom three places in the Premier League were occupied by the trio of promoted sides from last season. Namely that is Leicester City, QPR and our Claret cousins from near the Yorkshire border aka Burnley. At one stage I was even wishing that the Dingles would win a few games and survive just to break the seeming inevitable outcome. But a comical penalty miss and jangled own goal all within 50 seconds in the Turf Moor do-or-die clash with Leicester seems to suggest that my Blackburn Rovers will be playing them again next season. The fun and frolics at the bottom of the table are much more entertaining to behold than watching the rich kids at the top. Chelsea are boring. Fact. Piled with the dosh from a dodgy Russian, you would think they would manage to win the League with a touch of panache. But no… Jose Mourniho is becoming a self-parody and his team of continental mercenaries make Don Revie’s ruthless home-grown robotic assassins groomed within the Leeds United empire of the 1960s and 70s look like a bunch of gung-ho footballing cavaliers. Anyway, at least Watford and AFC Bournemouth can look forward to rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty come August. And probably getting stuffed every week. During my wayward travels as a permanently worried Blackburn Rovers fan, I have had little contact with Watford or the Cherries. I remember standing on an open end at Vicarage Road in January 1975 in our Third Division days as the rain poured down. There was nowhere to repel the elements as Rovers earned a goalless draw. I was drenched cos a Rovers scarf tied around your head does little to keep off a Hertfordshire version of a monsoon. And the rain was cold. I suppose I must have enjoyed the pint afterwards as I dried off. I recall Bournemouth becoming almost trendy in the early 70s as the changed their moniker from Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic to AFC Bournemouth under the smooth, swarthy tutelage of future Clarets’ mentor John Bond. They had Ted MacDougall scoring goals for fun and seemed destined for great things. But it seems to have taken until now. My only visit to Dean Court was in September 2013 en route back to Adelaide from a working stint in London. Rovers were 3-0 up at half-time. Bournemouth were down to 10 men and I was looking forward to a cricket score. But to their credit, Bournemouth dug in and won the second half with a goal to keep things in check with a 3-1 margin. Perhaps it signalled a sign of the spirit that would fuel things to come. I wish both of the unlikely aspiring high-flyers all the best. Rovers, alas, are nowhere near. We bid farewell to David Dunn this weekend, a local lad who has been a great servant. But the Indian interlopers’ deeds as owners mean our future is clouded with uncertainty. We are not alone as foreign intruders muscle in and treat clubs that are part of their respective communities as playthings. The old terrace chant of “You don’t know what you’re doing” has never rung more true. Still, there’s always next season. We all live in hope.