Has television killed the football match?
Back in the days before the Premier League and even live TV coverage of professional games, men's football matches were generally always played on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm. For those of us that can remember such halcyon days, pre-1990s, going to watch a professional football match was a regular ritual. For me, before I was involved with Cray Wanderers in an official capacity, it was knock off work in the City of London at 5pm on a Friday evening, catch the train home to Petts Wood railway station, hop on the number 161 bus up Petts Wood Road to the Poverest Road roundabout and walk home from there.
Depending on the fixtures for the following day, I either had the choice of watching the Wands if they were playing at Grassmeade or catching the train on the Saturday morning up to Selhurst to watch Crystal Palace play in the afternoon. Invariably the Wands or the Eagles (or the Glaziers, as they were nicknamed back then) would kick-off at 3pm. On a Saturday... not a Friday evening or a Sunday lunchtime; on a Saturday, along with all the other clubs in the EFL and non-League.
There was a short-lived time during the 1970s when the coal miners and railway workers went on strike and the British prime minister at the time, Edward Heath, declared a 3-day working week to conserve precious electricity. This, in turn, forced professional football matches to be played on a Sunday instead of a Saturday but this only lasted between 1 January and March 7 1974. And we ended up with several power cuts that lasted a few hours every day. It seemed much longer than three months at the time but, with regard to my trips to SE25, it meant that I could watch the Wands on the Saturday afternoon and then drive up to Selhurst Park on the Sunday afternoon after working at Oxford Road in the morning, to watch Palace play. As far as I was concerned, that was the only time the government got things right, controversially speaking or not.
Nowadays, we need to have our wits about us when hoping to catch a live Premier League or EFL game on the TV. Games tend to be shown on Friday nights, Saturday evenings at about 5.30pm, Sunday lunchtimes and early evening and occasionally on Monday nights as well. Then there's televised Premier League games on Saturday lunchtimes and the odd set of midweek matches here and there when there's no European tournament matches to be played. And, just for good measure, the two main terrestrial channels (BBC and ITV) tend to show the occasional FA Cup match, seemingly on any days of their choosing. However, with the BBC, if you record their coverage of FA Cup matches to watch 'as live' later then the chances are you'll miss the ending if any of the games go to extra time and penalties. How is that ever any good for the discerning neutral to enjoy such games to the bitter end? All the other channels seem to cater for the extra game time where needed.
While all this live televised football appears on the surface to be extremely useful to me and my current carer situation of not being able to attend games in person, the television cannot replace the live atmosphere experienced at actual matches, nor can it satisfy my enjoyment when games get cut off before the end due to programming quirks caused by certain broadcasters not accounting for the fact that most of the time I need to record the games and watch them 'as live' when I get some 'carer down time' and I have to rely on the broadcasters to make proper arrangements to show the entire games. I hope the BBC will hang its head in shame.
Of course, the one other aspect of trying to watch so many live broadcast Premier League and EFL matches is the restrictive cost of the different subscription charges. Sadly, I am repealing my subscriptions to the live football broadcasters when my current contract runs out, hopefully saving myself a small fortune every month by doing so. That will be like me turning back the clock thirty or so years to when highlights only were shown mostly on Saturday nights on Match of the Day, ironically on the BBC. I have my reasons for this drastic cull but mainly they are covered by one big factor... the novelty of paying for and watching live football on TV has finally worn off for me and, as the saying goes, when you get to the last page it's time to close the book.
Trevor Mulligan