Time to embrace Premier League's return and stop looking for flaws

In a weirdly pleasing sign of how sporting life is slowly returning to normal I gleefully opened the PGA Tour app for the first time in ages on Thursday only to see one of the players I had backed to win the Charles Schwab Challenge had dropped a shot at the first hole.

That’s good. That’s what used to happen when things chugged along without the complications and trauma of this diabolical virus.

And next week things take a step closer to the familiar old pattern of our existence as the Premier League resumes after a 99-day absence, with Aston Villa playing host to Sheffield United to kick off an orgy of live action that threatens to provide the final straw for all those relationships already heaving under the strain of such prolonged proximity.

Let’s recap the story so far of the 2019-20 season. The first thing to say is it was already the worst Prem season in many moons even before a global pandemic halted it.

Liverpool had the title wrapped up by Christmas, which wasn’t their fault but did rather ruin the suspense one always hopes the battle for top spot will provide.

And numerous matches were spoilt by the botched introduction of the video assistant referee, which was even more disruptive and annoying that anyone could have imagined, albeit bores like me who used to wet ourselves every time it cast its unwelcome shadow over games have since been given a sharp lesson in perspective during the cessation.

There are still reasonably intriguing contests for top-four places and to avoid relegation, but, while it will obviously be glorious to have this wonderful sport back on our screens, it will be good to plough through the remaining nine rounds of matches and get cracking with a new campaign, which will hopefully feature crowds before too long.

In the meantime, it would be much appreciated if people could refrain from making a big thing about the fact spectators are not allowed inside grounds.

This is, of course, a futile plea because you can guarantee that from Wednesday evening onwards we will be bombarded with tedious messages on all media channels from people who think they are telling us something we don’t know by proclaiming that it’s just not same without supporters, football is nothing without fans and other such pointless statements.

There will even be people who go a step further and say football should not have resumed until people were allowed through the turnstiles. This will represent simply a pathetic attempt to make the person who says it look like a ‘real’ fan.

The truth is football with no crowd is vastly preferable to no football at all. Do these people who bang on about how vital fans are spend the whole game staring at the stands? Is 90 minutes of combat on the pitch too much for their attention span?

Yes, crowds add colour, sound and atmosphere, but there’s a global pandemic on the go so we have to make sacrifices, and I fully intend to enjoy matches even without the usual exhilarating soundtrack from the sidelines.

Watching the first Bundesliga match after the resumption in Germany was, it must be said, slightly strange, but then I quickly got used to it and was able to savour matches without any problem, and I’m sure most of us will find it similar for the next few weeks.

One small benefit of the silence should be that we can hear players and management far more clearly, which is an enthralling prospect. I occasionally pop along to Selhurst to watch Palace’s Under-23s play in front of a crowd of barely more than a couple of hundred and find it fascinating to hear the players communicating with one another and their benches, as well as being able to eavesdrop on conversations with the referee.

Football coverage has always lacked the facility to allow us to hear as well as see what is happening on the pitch, and theoretically the locking of entrances should remedy that.

However, it appears OFCOM’s ultra-sensitive approach to TV viewers hearing swear words is likely to mean broadcasters’ sound teams will be required to do all they can to stifle even the mildest profanity.

One thing that will cause me to utter no end of bad language will be inevitable attempts to apply some pseudo-intelligent narrative to how different football is without anyone watching from the stands.

This happened within minutes of German football restarting, as one respected sportswriter claimed it was obvious players were not performing with the usual intensity, a completely unjustifiable assertion.

This was then followed up with numerous people declaring that the essence of the game had changed drastically due to home advantage being nullified.

In fairness to them, there are stats that appear to bear this out, with home teams having won 22 per cent of Bundesliga matches since the resumption compared to 43 per cent before the stoppage.

Home teams have also scored an average of 1.28 goals per game, down from 1.75. But those figures are not replicated in the German second division and it is still too small a sample of matches from which to draw concrete conclusions.

There is an obvious logic to the notion of a lack of crowds reducing the advantage home teams usually enjoy. As well as the boost players get from being cheered on by thousands of people, referees may be more willing to make decisions that would previously have ensured their ears were filled with the sound of mass hatred, and visiting teams could take a bolder, more successful approach on enemy soil than before.

It will be interesting to see how home advantage, traditionally worth roughly half a goal, holds up, and it will be nice to watch games without getting annoyed by VAR because, let’s face it, there are more important things to get upset about.

Most of all, though, it will be wonderful to watch live football again. Life has few greater pleasures.

Calm response to football betting settlements

Little did I know when I pledged not to get annoyed by betting that I would so quickly face such a stern test of my vow.

Ralph Beckett, along with Mark Johnston, may not have done anyone any favours with his lockdown call for outgoing BHA boss Nick Rust to stand down immediately, but he is still the greatest trainer of them all in my eyes and, with his string having picked up after a slow first few days of the new Flat season, he sent out five runners on Tuesday.

As usual (honestly, this is better than the standard hard luck story) I placed a King Rafe multiple, and it was a bumper day for the maestro as four of the quintet obliged. The one that didn’t, Vape, which I had included in my perm at 22-1, led everywhere bar the line and was matched at 1.07 on Betfair before being chinned in the dying strides.

Had he held on I would have collected 65 grand, which would have been handy. However, I’m pleased to say I did indeed ride this blow with far greater dignity than I would have done before Coronavirus changed our world view.

It has been interesting and pleasing to see a similarly calm early response to the bet-settlement quandary that bookmakers faced as a result of so many leagues having been cut short.

We had known a difficult situation was brewing for some time, but with Leagues One and Two having been settled on points per game this week, bookmakers have been forced to decide how to deal with ante-post wagers.

Some paid out on official results while others voided but, extremely commendably, paid out on winners as well.

That included bet365, who must have shelled out a significant sum in goodwill in another example of why they are such a popular bookmaker.

These unprecedented circumstances were always going to be a headache for bookmakers and a potential source of dismay and anger for punters, but it is pleasing that, notwithstanding the odd eruption of fury from some punters who felt hard done by, people have mostly accepted the situation without losing the plot.

Seemingly I am not the only one determined not to let betting get my goat.

Geoffrey Boycott's time has long been up

Geoffrey Boycott seems to be on his way out as a regular member of the Test Match Special team and - surprise, surprise - he has not taken the news well.

The tiresome Tyke cannot attend the upcoming series against the Windies due to his age and medical history, but it appears he will be used only sparingly if at all in future.

A pro-Boycs tweeter reacted to the news by posting: “White, male, straight, Tory and knows about cricket. Surprised he lasted this long at the BBC.”

The man himself regurgitated the message, adding “Absolutely right”, which he subsequently deleted.

He then patronisingly claimed any female replacements would be unqualified to fill his boots because they would not have experienced the power and pace of men’s cricket.

Boycott can jog on. How dare he talk about pace given the complete lack of it he showed when it came to scoring runs?

He was the most boring sportsman I ever had the misery of watching, taking longer to grind out 50 runs than most of us would take to walk from Lord's to Leeds. Scoreboard operators could safely wander down to the shop for a packet of cigarettes while he was at the crease, safe in the knowledge little would happen in the meantime.

There was once a certain comedy value to his groaning from the gantry, but now he is just a sad relic for whom the umpire’s finger has hopefully been raised for the final time.

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