Notes from a sporting week 31/03/08

Burnham off the mark with remarks:

In a week in which the Football Association’s ‘Respect’ campaign to treat referees in a better manner was brought into focus, it was disappointing to read the remarks of Andy Burnham, the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport in response to those made by Great Britain rugby league international Adrian Morley, in one of the Sunday broadsheets.

"Far too many footballers have been allowed to get away with this kind of petulance and ignorance for far too long. The referee's decision is final and the referee is always referred to as 'Sir', even now in Super League. Footballers should learn from us,” said the Warrington forward.

The minister’s response was sadly typical of the apologetic nature that ex-players, pundits and commentators take when discussing footballers’ conduct towards referees.

He said; “I would be the first to point out that football culture is different from rugby. No one expects footballers to be angels.”

Well no, but they do expect them to have some sense of manners and where and when they can cross the line. Furthermore to refer to someone like Morley as an angel is laughable. This is the man who holds the record for the quickest sending-off in international rugby league, 12 seconds against Australia in 2003.

Yet again someone in football tries to make the difference that football and rugby are different, one is for the working class lad, who has been brought up effing and blinding, whilst the second is for chaps who have a silver spoon firmly wedged in their gob and would be thwacked by their public school housemaster if such profanities were to pass their lips.

Sadly what Burnham fails to realise is that Morley plays rugby league, possibly the most blue collar sport in the world, and that despite players coming from some pretty ghastly areas of certain cities (ask the Leeds-born Jason Robinson) the players can still show the appropriate manners to officials.

In the same paper earlier in the week Sue Mott made the point that football’s continual inferiority complex to rugby union is a red herring, too easily dismissed as irrelevant because the players come from different ends of the social-economic spectrum, as if that should make any difference, manners, after all, are manners.

She pointed to boxing, hardly a upper-class pursuit to challenge polo, and the fact that its participants are from equally humble backgrounds, yet still manage to conduct themselves in a manner that is a credit to them, their coaches and above all their sport.

So what if other sports have got it right, it does football no credit to run scared of following their examples. Yet sadly Burnham has added himself to the list of people who complain about a problem, yet fail to take the necessary steps to remedy them. With all and sundry stepping up to take pot shots at the easily-attacked officials, no wonder there are fewer and fewer men and women wanting to take up the whistle.

In the end the sports and their cultures might be different, but appropriate treatment of people in the workplace isn’t. The new campaign desperately needs to work, if not football will well and truly have gone to the dogs. It will be bad at the top level, but even worse at the youth end. Who will want to referee a load of screaming brats on a Sunday morning in the rain, especially as they receive nothing but abuse for sacrificing their time? It will take a concerted effort by all involved and will need the FA and referees to have power of their convictions, hopefully then the players will realise what is right and wrong, despite the witterings of apologists such as Burnham.

Pelligrini lays down marker for Beijing:

Swimming has been in the headlines a lot these last seven days with the controversy over the new Speedo outfit many of the world’s best are wearing and how much is has helped the numerous world records that have fallen. There have been 18 since the turn of the year and four in the men’s 50m freestyle; three for Australian Eamon Sullivan (including the current 21:41 seconds) and one for Frenchman Alain Bernard, quite something when you consider that until Sullivan’s first breaking, the record had stood since 2000.

However, the one record that stood out was that set by Italian Federica Pelligrini in the women’s 400m freestyle on the final day of competition at the European Swimming Championships in Eindhoven on Monday.

Interestingly she is the only record breaker this year not to wear the Speedo outfit, yet finished in a time of 4:01:53 to beat the time held by French swimming star Laura Manaudou, take her European title and in doing so laid down the gauntlet for when the trans-Alpine rivals go head to head in swimming’s blue-riband event in Beijing.

Since winning the gold medal at the Athens Olympics Manaudou has been the undoubted superstar of women’s swimming. It was the first time a French women had ever won an Olympic swimming gold and she also left Greece with a silver and bronze.

Her success was followed up at the 2005 and 2007 Swimming World Championships when she twice won the 400m freestyle gold and she held the 400m record with 4:02:13 until Pelligrini broke it. In Eindhoven she won the 200m backstroke and 4x200m freestyle relay and silver in the 100m backstroke.

All this would seem like any other rivalry that will provide a sub-text to events in China this August, but then you need to factor in Luca Marin. Italian Marin, who won a bronze in the 400m individual medley, is Manaudou’s ex-squeeze and in May last year persuaded her to train with him Turin. She didn’t last long in Italy and returned to France under a cloud in August.

Then later in the year at the European Championships in Budapest Manaudou and Marin went their separate ways and within days nude pictures of Manaudou made their way onto the internet, with Marin denying responsibility. Then Marin starting stepping out with Pelligrini, meaning that the spice factor in Beijing will have been ratcheted up even more after events in The Netherlands.

No doubt Manaudou will have had her pride pricked by Pelligrini and Marin and will be out to even the score in Beijing. It could lead to a monster of a clash between the pair, much in the way Ian Thorpe’s battle with Michael Phelps was eagerly awaited long before events began in Athens.

With world records looking more than likely to be tumbling in the pool, it will undoubtedly be the venue that holds our attention more than any other in the opening week of the Olympics.
JI 31/03/08