Time to say goodbye

WHILE I was away the Evening Standard Londoner's Diary suggested I'd be hanging up my phone at 5 Live at the end of the season. And they're right, I am. The only thing they got wrong, in the aftermath of Andrew Neil's stormy exit from his Sunday breakfast slot, was that he and I are victims of some political plot.

I'm certainly not that. I've done nearly nine seasons. Not bad when my original contract was for six weeks!

I don't suppose anyone will ever do such a long stint again, even if 5 Live's phone-ins survive much longer, which as Mick Dennis predicted on Wednesday, they may well not.

Regular changes of presenter is one way of breathing back some life into a jaded format. On Sundays Alan Green is doing well, even if it is mainly people reacting to what he said in his last commentary.

But then Alan, bless him, speaks his mind, and has a mind to speak - a tricky thing to do when a candid word can lead to the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson boycotting the station for months on end.

The Saturday flagship Six-0-Six programme which I did for seven years, and pushed the audience up from around 300,000 to more than 750,000 won its spurs by making people think they weren't just letting off steam but could actually get something done by ringing in.

In those days, 40-50,000 people would ring in each evening, and they weren't wrong.

When, for instance, Manchester United fans were brutalised by Turkish police six years ago, and the story broke on Six-0-Six, a flurry of action ensued, including a deputation of MPs to the Foreign Office led by the then Labour sports spokesman Tom Pendry.

Pendry, Graham Kelly, David Davies, and top chairmen like Leeds United's Peter Ridsdale would regularly listen, and phone in when they felt a point needed to be answered.

I even had Matt Le Tissier calling from the team coach to say he was not really overweight after all!

In those days, the programme aspired to more than hot air about the afternoon's action, and tried to confront the myriad of problems faced by the travelling fan. And there's no doubt the articulate way these particular issues were addressed by callers of all ages from all backgrounds helped create the climate for the government's Football Task Force - the first serious attempt to make football accountable to its longsuffering supporters.

Today, perhaps inevitably since such freshness is hard to sustain, the Saturday show has gone back to basics. It's route one stuff now, with a far narrower range of voices calling for the heads of which ever managers have had the temerity to lose that afternoon.

Apart from being over the moon, or sick as a parrot, this lot don't have much else to offer. How long that kind of thing will continue to satisfy a large audience must be open to doubt, and is indeed being doubted. But whether the phone-in lives or dies, one thing is certain I enjoyed my years on the line, and leave with a sackful of happy memories, and a huge reservoir of enthusiasm for the 5 Live concept, which is about as far away as you can get from the traditional, starchy BBC image, and all the better for that.

I suggested at the time that Terry Venables (above) would not have too much difficulty saving Middlesbrough from the drop.

But even I am astonished at how good it's been at the Riverside under his command - seven games four wins, three draws. I now think he mustn't be allowed come May to slip away to spend more time with a leisure complex or some television lights.

Venables proved he's still got it as a coach, and there's no shortage of Premiership clubs, not just Middlesbrough, who could do with a bit of Terry's magic right now.

Why we must put Blatter on the transfer list

EVEN I am shocked at the behaviour of FIFA's controversial chairman Sepp Blatter. At the very time he was telling the BBC the transfer system was safe in his hands, FIFA, football's world governing body, were slipping to the European Commission a document conceding that players could leave a club with just three months' notice.

If permitting somebody to turn out for Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea in the same season isn't driving a coach and horses through the system, I don't know what is.

Now the whole thing has deteriorated into a row between FIFA and their European counterparts, UEFA.

And UEFA could use Blatter's insolence to walk away. It's daft after all that FIFA hold such sway when the game's financial power is firmly locked up in Europe. UEFA could withdraw from FIFA, agreeing to re-enter only when certain other bits of nonsense are sorted out, like the new rule that only one in six World Cup Finals will be held in Europe, or the highly damaging FIFA regulation that forces clubs, whatever their schedules, to give up players for even the most futile of international friendlies.

Instead UEFA are willing to wound but afraid to strike, sending ultimatums and then when they fail, reaching for yet another soggy compromise. And they're not getting much help from us.

That old nonentity, FA chairman Geoff Thompson, had a chance to stamp his authority on the process this week. But he didn't attend the crucial meeting because he was on holiday, and wouldn't come back. So the FA case was sent over in a letter!

With that sort of leadership, who knows what sort of shambles will emerge?

Hooray for the bad guy

WHAT fun. There's egg all over the faces of some of the Wembley pundits this week. When "bad guy" Ken Bates was replaced by "good guy" Rodney Walker, how they gloated.

But though the personnel may change, the underlying realities remain the same. There will be no athletics at Wembley, exactly as Bates intended.

Walker has one vital task to perform; to persuade the bankers to back Wembley. He'll do that by trimming some of the costs, and will then use his City credibility to get them to sign up to the new package. Essentially, therefore, Bates's vision remains in place.

Police are killing off cup fever

WHY are the police still running football? Last season the FA said that the police would no longer be able to stop FA Cup replays in the week immediately following the original tie.

It hasn't happened.

There's still a 10-day gap, often fatal to interest, as a half- empty Villa Park showed on Wednesday.

And it's getting worse.

Next Wednesday's Worthington Cup semi-final between Birmingham and Ipswich has been postponed as there is a Villa-Leeds Premiership match that same evening, and West Midlands police will not allow them both to go ahead on the same night.

This power of veto dates back to the 80s when football hooliganism did put police resources under strain. That's no longer the case, and the police should be told to get on with it. They're supposed to be public servants, not public dictators.

Copyright 2001
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