THE trouble with being a traditionalist is you start to feel like a dinosaur after a while and wonder if it’s just you that’s out of step.
Yet this old tyrannosaurus is constantly heartened by the murmuring of others who feel that it is the meddling of dolts that infuriates us – and rightly so.
The FA Cup Final should be played at Wembley – full stop! No semi-finals.
They should revert to traditional homes of their own (i.e. Villa Park, Old Trafford, or if you want to modernise the Emirates, or Millennium Stadium, Cardiff).
As a result of some clown at the FA. coming up with the idea of letting semi-finalists tread the hallowed turf, we now have a Manchester derby in London which is going to cost a fortune to police, and which drags everyone down from the Mancunian Way to Wembley Way at considerable, unnecessary expense.
Why? If Manchester City beat Dynamo Kiev and qualify for the Europa League quarter-finals, the Manchester United derby London semi-final will have to be played on Sunday, April 17, which just happens to coincide with the London Marathon and Arsenal’s Barclays Premier League game with Liverpool.
So the capital grinds to a halt, admittedly not for the first time, but surely avoidable with other venues quite suitable for a big occasion.
Over 70,000 fans will be making the trek, along with Scotland Yard, Greater Manchester Police and British Transport Police.
The entire security operation is already predicted to become the most expensive for any domestic match in this country’s history, and a Scotland Yard spokesman, with head firmly between his knees, admitted: “It is a complete nightmare.”
I’ve come to accept that players from Chipping Sodbury United and Leighton Buzzard Dynamos can have their moment of glory in our national treasure of a stadium, and prance around with daft hats on their heads, but the FA Cup should still be sacrosanct for our top professional players, with a Wembley final providing the pinnacle of their careers.
AS YOU may know, I rigorously defend referees because they do the job from hell, and even when they make mistakes I tend to forgive them on the grounds that so do players, managers and certainly commentators.
Plus I’d hate to be a referee myself.
Having said all that there can be no defence for the plonker who sent off the player who rugby tackled a pitch invader last week.
Whether the offender was a streaker or a manikin ( spelt as reported, a new word to me?!) the bloke shouldn’t have been there and the player did a public service by performing a civil arrest.
Good referees always applied commonsense, this one clearly did not know the meaning of the word.
FEW cricketers polarise opinion as much as Kevin Pietersen.
Outrageously gifted, outwardly arrogant, infuriatingly inconsistent the England batsman flew home last week for an operation he said could no longer be delayed.
By all accounts his national team manager Andy Flower was less than impressed.
He felt Pietersen could have played on through the pain for the duration of England’s stay at the World Cup, which judging by the performances against Holland and Bangladesh may not be very long anyway.
Yet again Pietersen has not helped himself by almost immediately being spotted in a nightclub within hours of his arrival back in Blighty.
I don’t expect him to lead a monastic life, but this was somewhat injudicious, and if he just happens to recover in time to fulfil a lucrative contract in the IPL, it would be no surprise.
