Pete Barrow: Time to cotton on to the biggest clash of all

Oct 16 2009 by Peter Barrow, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Now I can’t promise the sight of Sam Allardyce picking up the ball and refusing to play on until some perceived injustice has been put to rights on Sunday, but if you tune in for the ‘derby of all derbies’ you will not be disappointed.

It won’t be one for the purists, it won’t be a classic, but there will be passion both on and off the field and all I can say is – ‘Come on Accy!’

WHAT has football come to when the chief executive of South Africa’s World Cup organising committee can say he is desperate that Portugal and Argentina must qualify for the finals.

That man, Danny Jordaan, has made it plain he wants to see Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi out on the veldt next summer.

He is getting plenty of help as FIFA have already moved the goalposts in Europe, having decided belatedly to seed the play-offs after the qualifying group stages.

Now I may be getting forgetful in my dotage, but I don’t recall in 1974 that there was any big push from FIFA to ensure that Tony Currie and Colin Bell would be on show in the finals in West Germany.

Equally I also fail to recall a FIFA edict in the 1960s that only a team wearing green shirts could qualify from a certain group to ensure George Best was at the finals, or in the 1990s that only a team whose supporters could conquer the close harmonies required to deliver a rousing version of ‘Land Of My Fathers’ would get through to allow Ryan Giggs to play – who knows how the rules would have needed to be changed to put Liberia through and let George Weah have a run out?

Surely the competition is about teams (or nations) and not players – and the governing body’s manipulation is as unwelcome as it is unfair.

I just hope that the Republic of Ireland stuff the side that is put in front of them in the play-offs and leave Sepp Blatter to ponder the fact that football is a game and not something he can control – and that being president of FIFA does not actually imbue him with the powers of a deity.

AS A Red Rose cricket fan it is wonderful to see you Yorkists getting back to what you are best at – falling out in lumps!

Plenty has been said about Matthew Hoggard’s departure from Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Both sides have put across their arguments and it has seen a return to the kind of fractiousness (if there is such a word) the Tykes have been famous for over the years.

The in-fighting has been so limp in Yorkshire cricket in recent seasons that Lancashire have been forced to step in over several campaigns – hence the Stuart Law and Dominic Cork fiasco – just to keep the levels of conflict in the northern counties ticking over.

But what worries me more is the insinuation that the ECB have been putting financial pressure on the counties to dispense with ‘senior’ players (i.e. those over 31) to allow young talent to come through.

This surely has to be a step in the wrong direction.

If there is any sport in which experience counts it is cricket, and I am sure as much is achieved in the handing on of knowledge in the dressing room as there is in addressing the situations that arise out on the field of play – therefore 32-year-old Hoggard’s involvement and input should be invaluable to Yorkshire.

Sadly I haven’t met Mr Hoggard, but I am sure he could have the same influence at Headingley that Peter Martin – both a giant and a gent – had at Old Trafford.

While Accrington legend Digger (I’m beginning to think this particular column would be better published in the Accrington Observer rather than the Huddersfield Examiner) played fewer games for England than Hoggard by a country mile, his experience was valued and he was retained by Lancashire until 2004 when he had reached the ripe old age of 36.

What he had to impart to the likes of Jimmy Anderson, Saj Mahmood et al will have helped these players no end in their formative years.

The same truth will apply all around the counties and I’m sure that Andy Caddick never ‘kept Mum’ at Somerset when it came to telling some up-and-comer the best way to lull a batsman into an all-consuming sense of insecurity.

Whatever the politics in the Yorkshire camp, and whatever the edicts from the English game’s governing body, I can’t help but think that letting Hoggard go is most simply described as crazy.