We're all armchair supporters now!

Many thanks to all those who have been involved with hosting old Poppies games on Youtube over the past month.  It has been curiously reassuring to sit down at 3.00PM or 7.45 PM to watch a familiarly unfamiliar Kettering match.  Some we'd seen before, some we certainly hadn't, except live on the day, decades ago.  Whether the games had been commentated on by local bumpkins, or played out to a gloriously throaty accompaniment from hundreds of Poppies fans, such as the Cup replay at Lincoln, seeing these games has been great fun.

I found the older games particularly fascinating.  Pitches that would make Russell Slade blub like a 5-year old with a grazed knee.  Red card challenges that barely stirred the referee's attention - Tigger's two delightful two-footed, knee high lunges at Selhurst Park were a particular high point.  Glimpsing familiar faces in the crowd looking, if not exactly young, certainly younger-ish.

What I found especially refreshing about the older games was the freedom with which they were played.  Whether we were playing Blackburn in the Cup or Wycombe in the League the games were played at fantastic clip, and every team was determined to attack at every opportunity.

That teams would seek to score goals may sound obvious - it should be self-evident that teams look to score goals.  How else do you win a football game?  But these games simply sprinted through the action.  Goalkeepers received the ball and didn't fanny around for thirty seconds of time wasting.  No, they either gave it straight to the full-back, or aimed to punt it into the stratosphere.  The job of midfielders was to feed the forwards.  Not indulge in protracted passages of square balls to their fellow midfielders, only broken by passing back to the defenders so they could do the same. 

As much as modern football frowns on direct play in favour of "possession" football, is the spectacle actually improved by watching defensive players basically wank with the ball in their own half until someone gets baffled by a bobble, and the ball is laid back to the keeper for them to finally clear it down the park? 

To my mind the greatest crime against football came about when Premier League supporters, keen to revel in their classy football credentials, started to applaud blindingly obvious, simple square balls.  I am reminded of a pre-season game with Leicester City some twenty-odd years ago, when bog-standard cross-field passes of a quality ever single person in the crowd could achieve were vigorously applauded by supporters of the Foxes. 

"Doug, Doug, Doug the thug."
In his entire career he never knowingly
passed the ball anywhere but forward.

How better to show the non-leaguers that they thoroughly understood how the modern, top-level game was now played?  Why pass the ball forward when a dozen of tippy-tappy square balls between lumpen Matt Elliott and static Steve Walsh PROVED that their team played sexy football rather than the basic fare served up in the lower leagues?

So, what did we end up with?  Goalkeepers who can dribble a ball, but can't catch one.  Moderately gifted defensive players passing to each other for mind-numbingly long periods, to a smattering of knowledgeable, polite applause.  And talented strikers touching the ball half a dozen times in the game.  And we get to pay more for it!  Doesn't sound like a great deal to me....!