Thursday, August 28, 2008

The following was written by a Bolton fan on the BBC website

Imagine for a second, you are a Northampton fan.

You are in two minds as to whether or not you should go to the game (Bolton v Northampton) because of the distance involved, and it being a Tuesday night match.

You notice that there's an hour long highlights programme on ITV, and decide, well... If we do well, we're guaranteed to get a lot of footage on there...

That makes up for it a little, and as such, you decide to stay home and listen on the radio, or watch SSN (or whatever).

You're astonished when the team are given a penalty, and its scored. Deep down you think, this can't last long...

But then, 2-0! Dreamland... But still, there's a nagging doubt at the back of your mind. You're maybe wishing you had gone to the game, but you tell yourself, oh well, I'll see all this later tonight on the highlights programme...

Then there's a red card, and suddenly, you really start to believe it could happen. With a few minutes left, 2-1, but surely its too late... But wait, drama... A disallowed goal...

For a second, you thought they'd thrown it away, but no!

At full time, you celebrate, and start clock watching until the highlights show begins...

You sit through about half an hour of Newcastle beating Coventry. Yes, it went to extra-time, but you can't help but think to yourself surely our game should have been given the first slot? Its not every day a Northampton fan can enjoy a result like this after all...

The minutes tick by, surely it will be on soon... Still nothing...

Seconds left now... the presenter says something along the lines of "by the way, Northampton beat Bolton tonight," and the show finishes.

You're outraged... How can they not show even a glimpse of the game?

Now, come back to being a Bolton fan.

Think back to the times when we were the giant killers...

I still have the extended highlights of our 3-1 victory at Highbury in the FA Cup, courtesy of MOTD...

Then there's the glory of our 2-0 win at Anfield when we were in the same league as Northampton are now.

Can you imagine, how you would feel, if those games had not been shown?

I feel sorry for the Northampton fans, who have been robbed of their moment in the sun...


This is me writing now -

I would like to know why a 60 minutes 'highlights' programme did not show a single second of probably the biggest cup shock of the night? Our match was the lead news item on the BBC's league cup web page. Our match was the lead football story on Sky Sports news and was the primary football report in most newspapers. ITV on the other hand did not show a single second of action. One-sided predictable wins were shown. But a team from League 1 beating a Premiership team 45 places above them in the league structure apparently didn't warrant inclusion. Why should I be surprised though? After all, the ITV network thought nothing of reneging on the ITV Digital deal and plunging many clubs like mine into the financial mire. (A lower league football fan never forgets these things.)

8 comments:

Reidski said...

It's only the League Cup - Millwall haven't taken this tournament seriously in a long time ;-)

J.J said...

Not since the 12th August when we knocked you out anyway!

Yorkshire Pudding said...

In a normal week, why should "Match of the Day" exclusively focus on Premiership football? The BBC is meant to serve the whole nation and yet it seems to blithely ignore the fact that England has seventy two "lower league" clubs whose fans are probably more committed and passionate than the fairweather fans who follow your "Chelseas" and your "Man U's" because they know what it means to suffer more downs than ups and yet they still keep coming. What is more - the quality of football is - on the whole - very good. Real Premiership supporters who love football would - in any case -surely be interested to see what's happening downstairs.

Fire Byrd said...

Isn't match of the day on Saturday and depending on the result sex happens, or was that in another life time I had!!!

Karen said...

I agree with what you said YP - why does MOTD focus solely on premiership matches. Surely you don't need the rights to show highlights? There is of course The Championship on ITV1 on a Sunday morning, but I think the less said about that the better I think.

ITV is an awful, awful channel and I very rarely watch anything on it (although to my shame I always get sucked into the X Factor).

Reidski said...

Of course it's a rights issue. It's like saying: "Why does ITV only show highlights of the lower leagues on a Sunday morning?" Err, that would be because that is all they are allowed to show!

trousers said...

I must admire the Bolton fan who wrote that - rising above the tribalism and feeling some empathy for the other side.

Yes this has got to be frustrating.

J.J said...

YP - apart from anything else Premiership games are so sodding boringthese days - except Hull's obviously.

Pixie - a great result can indeed equal great sex. (We had a great result last Tuesday!)

Karen - ITV is indeed god awful. Except for Corrie of course!

Reidski - but ITV did have the right to show our match - they just chose not to.

And Trousers, yes - I thought it was really good of him/her.