End of the golden age - Old-school journalism takes another blow

Jun 22 2008 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

PROOF that I am old, Pt 341: the death last week of Shoot magazine.

Yep, you can file it alongside other one-time rite of passage boys’ reading material now on sale only at the great John Menzies in the sky . . .

Roy of the Rovers, Tiger, Smash Hits and, er, Parade.

This latest blow to old-school journalism left me feeling much as I did when my mam discovered and disposed of my secret stash of the latter publication back in the day . . .

Like I had lost an old friend. Albeit one I hadn’t seen for years.

An old friend stuck in what I, in my dotage (or late 30s, at least), now regard as a golden age.

A golden age in which the Internet was a mere glint in a geek’s eye, satellite TV was pie in the Sky and televised football still so strictly rationed that you devoured just about every word written about the game.

An age when, in terms of the small screen, the peerless Brian Moore’s analysis of the few big matches broadcast was analysis enough.

An age, in other words, when pundits as we know them (all so well) today pretty much didn’t exist, and football remained a blessedly simple game.

I make that point not because the quality of punditry at Euro 2008 has been particularly poor — it’s been same old, same old.

No, I make that point because the cult of the pundit has spawned the likes of Terry Daly.

Terry who? You might well ask.

During the week, my in-basket (see, I’m not a total luddite) was clogged up by a lengthy email from Mr Daly in which he talked up his football and coaching analysis website while lambasting the ex-pros now lounging on BBC and ITV sofas in Austria and Switzerland.

No harm done there, you might think. Other than it’s not Alan Shearer’s monotone delivery or Mark Lawrensen’s cringeworthy quips which are upsetting Daly.

No, it’s the fact that they and match commentators are “wrongly defining ‘weight’ in the movement of the ball”.

You see, Daly’s Law (I kid you not) states that “weight is the ball’s vertical drop due to gravity. Not, as the football pundits maintain, its horizontal pace.”

Catchy eh?

“It’s not just football coaches who need to change their understanding of the difference between horizontal pace and vertical weight in the movement and manipulation of a football,” added Terry.

I might suggest Mr Daly changes his understanding of the difference between what is and isn’t of any interest to anybody whatsoever.

But it turns out the FA recently published an article of his in their official magazine.

So what price some not-so-bright spark at Sky or the Beeb being blinded by science and Daly popping up on our small screens one day soon?

The fact that he dares to bore us at all is proof that the modern media’s coverage of football — Match of the Day now more like Stats of the Day — is exhaustive AND exhausted.

Anyone who says we better understand the game for it, didn’t grow up reading — or, indeed, watching — Shoot.