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The Sunderland-Spurs Predicament
If irrefutable proof were needed that, in the context of football broadcasting, fans who attend games are the low men and women on the totem pole - when compared to those watching on television - exhibit A, Your Honour, is the Sunderland-Spurs match being played on Sunday, 13th of September.
The issue is this: being played at 1.30pm, the match clashes with the Great North Run. Resultantly, many Sunderland fans (and at least one Spurs supporter I know of) have to make a choice between sacking off the run (which they have trained for months to get ready for, and for which they have raised money for charity) or not go to the game. While not strictly impossible in the truest sense of the word, doing both is implausible.
When Professor Brian Cox - who is doing the Great North Run for the Jon Egging Trust - next needs to think up a point of reference to explain the notion of implausibility in physics to his students, the chances are he’ll posit, “Need I remind you of the Great North Run/Sunderland-Spurs predicament.” Pithy.
Decisions, decisions: it appears that the prevalent choice among Sunderland fans is to do the Great North Run and not attempt to attend the match, even if, in many cases, a ticket for the game has already been paid for via their season card. If you’re the kind of person who’s gone out of his or her way to train and raise money for charities like Cancer Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Bobby Moore Fund, Children with Cancer UK, British Heart Foundation, MS Society, NSPCC, Stroke Association, Cystic Fibrosis Trust, Parkinson’s UK, Motor Neurone Disease Association, Arthritis Research UK, Epilepsy Research UK, there was probably only one winner. That’s not to say supporters aren’t indignant.
The poster ‘Kauto Star’ on the always-entertaining Sunderland message board ReadyToGo.net/smb [disclosure: I support Sunderland] said: “The club/Sky want shooting with sh*t for this.”
So, I asked Sunderland Association Football Club whether they had attempted to move the match to a later TV timeslot, so that fans could comfortably make kick-off, and 26 minutes later they replied to say “SAFC does not have any control over the scheduling of matches.”
In which case, that leaves a solitary target for Mr. Star’s requested cannonade of feculent: take aim at the people who think that TV viewers in Guangdong Province, China, or Chañaral, Chile, are more important than the lads and lasses who pay hard-won currency to attend the game, without whom, let’s be clear, there’d be next to no global televisual interest in English football. How many people would watch football being played in an empty stadium on TV? Hundreds? Thousands?
Whichever way you cut it, not nearly big enough of an audience to get sponsors climbing over each other to associate their brand with football. Moral of the story? Match-going fans deserve better. You know this, they know this; fans have been banging this particular drum for over a decade.
For those Sunderland fans who are at least going to attempt to make the game after doing the Great North Run, a poster on the Sunderland Message Board called Zodiac, said: “The Metro from Shields will be a reet fart on.” [Shields, i.e. South Shields, is where the race finishes.] Are you listening Sky Sports? I hope so, because “Reet fart on” is Mackem parlance for an insupportable inconvenience. You did that. Happy?
I can’t think of another industry on Earth that continually inconveniences the very people who are necessary to make it such a cash cow. “Get your teats out for the lads” is the favoured industry chant, I believe.
