Football in August

It's August, the mercury finally cracked 30C for the first time this year on Sunday, and England have won the Ashes against a limited but bloody stubborn Australia. Oh, and the football season started fifteen days ago.

Fifteen days ago - the second weekend in August. Now I love football a hell of a lot, definitely up there with my other top sports both to watch and to play, but surely, surely, the second week of August is far too early? Britain's footballers only had nine weeks off between the FA Cup Final and the start of the season. For professional athletes, exhausted after a fifty game season, that's simply ridiculous.

We're told that the reason the season started too early is because it's a World Cup year, so everything has to be finished nice and early to give our boys the best chance possible. But just think about that for a moment - we're forcing the cream of our crop to take less of a summer break, cram even more matches into a shorter season and then play for up to another five weeks to hopefully lift the Jules Rimme at the end of it all.

Simply put, there is too much football to fit into a season anymore. It's not even as if the August football provides particular value for money either - players look tired, unfit and overweight whilst the Premier League is disrupted by all manner of internationals and European qualifying games. Meanwhile the FA Cup and League Cup have already started in earnest for the lower teams. And all this despite the aforementioned mercury hitting 30C.

I'd love to say at this point that there's a simple solution - which would surely be to reduce the number of teams in each league. But the problem is that football won't do it because no other sport will either.

Cricket is about to embark on a mammoth series of one day internationals following eight intense weeks of test action, the rugby union season continues to stretch as European competitions grow, formula one now has seventeen or eighteen rounds compared to twelve only a few years back and rugby league got so fed up with it all that they switched to a summer league (which seems to extend far beyond the actual summer). And to cap it all, tennis now seems to be played every single month of the year, forcing the world's best to slog it out across twelve continuous rolling months to protect their rankings.

It's got to stop - too much of a good thing very quickly becomes boring and repetitive. As a prime example, witness the continued overhyping of 'Super Sunday' by Sky Sports (the fact that the fixtures seem to keep coming together so fortuitously is another matter entirely) or the fact that a game labelled Liverpool vs Barcelona or Chelsea vs AC Milan just doesn't seem to appeal quite so much anymore. We've seen their players lots of times before, they're no longer shrouded in mystery and intrigue, and we'll probably see them again next year even if we miss it this time.

Competitive sport is a marvellous, wonderful invention, but the continued year round thirst for exposure by individual sports is drastically overcrowding the calendar and reducing the magic of it all.

Satellite television hasn't helped, but if we want the majesty of sporting competition restored then we have to resist the urge and remember the old adage - less (truly) is more.

Freddie, Steady, Go?

In 1998 Brazil were the best football team in the world. Then their star player and talisman suffered some form of seizure just hours before the world cup final, was shunted onto the pitch anyway and Brazil got their arses kicked.

In 2003 England were the best rugby union team in the world. Then their arguably most important player, Richard Hill, got injured and England were pretty mediocre in their first few games of the world cup. But they waited, rested him properly and brought him back when the time was right which paved the way for Wilkinson’s right boot and all that.

In 2009, England aren’t the best cricket team in the world but they do have a damn good chance of beating Australia in The Ashes for the second time in four years. Their star player is injured, but has so far played through the pain and is fighting to make the start line for tomorrow’s fourth test.

A half-fit Freddie is still a pretty good player and more importantly, any kind of Freddie still scares the crap out of the Australians. But a Freddie who breaks down on the first morning of the test could rule himself out of the rest of this one, and the decider at the Oval as well.

So what do England do?

The sensible option would surely be rest him, supercharge his batteries one last time and unleash a demi-god at the Oval in two weeks time. But the sensible option ignores the fact that England could wrap up the series in the next five days and not even have to worry about the fifth test. And the sensible option ignores the most obvious question – how do you drop the man?

Seriously?

He wants to play, the whole of England wants him to play and even his own teammates are struggling to make a rational decision. Despite the fact that he’s not England’s best bowler, or batsman, or arguably even their best player anymore, he still has an incredible aura. And when that’s combined with his sheer colossal willpower and uncanny ability to make something happen when it’s most needed, he simply becomes undroppable. Especially against the Australians.

So goes the argument, and it’s a pretty good one. Unless you remember what happened in 1998 and 2003 that is.

Carp(e) Diem

Britain’s most famous fish is dead. Benson, the apparently ‘iconic’ celebrity fish has been found floating on the surface of Bluebell Lakes. Terrible news for Benson, and indeed for the angling community who are said to be devastated and in mourning.

And yet the timing of Benson’s death is, all things considered, good news for the now deceased. If he’d passed away in November, April or pretty much any other month except August, then it’s likely the champion fish wouldn’t have received more than a quick mention on page 42 of the local paper. As it was, he (I presume, though it could be a she I suppose) got front page coverage in The Times and has had continual airtime on BBC News all day.

The reason for this is the oft-discussed phenomenon of ‘silly season’, the time of the year when hard-hitting news is thin on the ground, most of the FTSE 100’s top brass are floating on the Med, and those left behind are desperately searching for anything even half-worth reading or writing.

As someone who spends his days concocting ways to get clients into the papers and onto the TV screens, silly-season presents something of a double edged sword. On the one hand, political and economic news is much reduced, which means there’s more space to fill and hence more opportunities to fill it. But on the other, as dear old Benson demonstrates, it takes something genuinely different to make the grade.

The lack of political or economic news is also something of a barrier – there’s much less to hook onto than usual. And even if you do succeed, chances are that a large proportion of those people you’re trying to reach and influence are either not paying attention as much as they would usually or are too busy enjoying the delights of a 99p with a flake and some raspberry sauce. All in all then, silly season is just as challenging as any other time of the year, only for very different reasons.

And with that in mind, I’m off to research Britain’s other animal superstars with a view to potentially offering them and their owners life insurance policies in the unfortunate event of another one of them 'doing a Benson’.