The Friday Blog: It Was a Pass
As you will have gathered by now, I am not much of a soccer fan. I can, however, recognise and appreciate genius and star quality where it exists in any sporting arena. Someone who had both in spades, and was actually a soccer player I used to really rather enjoy watching, and may have even been prepared to pay for the privilege of doing so, was the enigmatic Eric Cantona. Cantona, it always seemed to me, would have been as suited to life as a poet as that of a professional athlete. His family home was in a repurposed cave system in the hills of Marseille and, even during his footballing days, he appeared regularly on stage and screen. His comments about seagulls and trawlers were a quite brilliant and hilarious riposte to a press corps which was taking itself, and its subject matter, way too seriously.
He was also the inspiration behind the wonderful 2009 Ken Loach film, Looking for Eric. In it, the main protagonist, a Manchester United superfan, down on his luck and being terrorised by local hoodlums, is visited by his idol in a drug fuelled apparition. “What was your best moment on the field,” the fan wanted to know, “Surely one of the many goals, maybe a free kick or perhaps an audacious chip over the ‘keeper.” “No” said Cantona, “it was a pass.”
Cantona achieved notoriety, a criminal conviction and 120 hours community service for jumping into the crowd and attacking an opposing supporter. Now, let me say that it was a very bad thing to do, should not have happened and is hardly a good example to all the little Red Devils out there, but the incident did rather amuse me at the time, as did the reaction of the victim. This was a man who thought it was perfectly reasonable to hurl abuse at someone, and abuse that, in other circumstances, might has been considered as criminally racist, just because he was in a sports ground. It is behaviour that many of us have had to endure in other stadia. Cantona spent his community service coaching soccer to kids, which I thought was a good, and pragmatic use of everyone’s time and resources, and capitalised on the peculiar skills of a very talented individual.
Recalling the incident brought on rather mischievous thoughts as the hullabaloo surrounding Boris and the BBC Chairman rumbles on. I have to say that I could never have imagined that the story had this much mileage, but a lot of people, including many in the Tory Party, will just not let it go. Boris has now clocked up so many misdemeanours that it is only a mater of time before they catch up on him and he is in front of The Beak. I wonder which of Johnson’s peculiar skills the Magistrate will decide is appropriate to utilise to repay his debt to society. Answers on a postcard to HM Director of Public Prosecutions.
Speaking of wrongdoing, sometimes you cannot do right for doing wrong, just ask the North West Ambulance Service. Feeling sorry for its staff being holed up outside A&E departments for hours on end, NWAS offered up vouchers for free tea and coffee at hospital outlets. Nice gesture. But there is a but. The scheme has been scrapped after a bill arrived for £20,000 from just one hospital in December. 20 Grand. Crickey! At a fiver a pop (the limit per transaction), that is 4,000 goes. In a month. The trouble is that these days hospital foyers look like franchise filled airport lounges, complete with agonisingly slow Baristas. The second busiest Costa outlet in Birmingham is in the reception at the Queen Elizabeth. The busiest, incidentally, is 500 yards away on the University campus. Seven and a half quid for a Latte and a Panini! Today’s students do not know they have been born. Bring back the WRVS, spoonful of instant and some hot water.
I bet your Mum told you that if you did not have anything nice to say about somebody, then it is best to say nothing at all. There is also the old adage about damming with faint praise. Enter Alister Jack, Scottish Secretary and all round miserable so and so. Some breaking news on Wednesday when Nicola Sturgeon caught us all on the hop by stepping down as First Minister in the Scottish Parliament. Everybody and their dog had a theory as to why, but I think, eventually, jobs like that take their toll and the thought of another thousand spins on the hamster wheel just becomes unbearable. The tributes and acknowledgements came in correspondingly and Jack described her as a formidable politician, which is where he should have left it. Yes, we know you are not a nationalist, but agree to disagree, it is called democracy. But no, he went off on one about how this might signal a change of direction for Scotland and how Scottish government could now “drop its divisive obsession with independence.” No chance Jack lad. You may not have agreed with her position on everything, but I thought she was sincere, polished and, above all, acted with integrity. I think governments in other home nations could learn a thing or two from her. What she did manage to do was leave on her own terms, not many politicians manage that, they nearly always get fired. Even Prime Ministers.
Also leaving on his own terms and at the top of his game is Nigel Edwards, CEO at the Nuffield Trust. Nigel is the cleverest person I know who is prepared to take my calls. He talked me out of doing a PhD. He does not know it, but I was seriously considering one and had a catch up with him in the diary. An hour later, my head hurting, I thought what is the point, I am not capable of quality, original thinking on all matters policy, because he has already done it. Whatever he does next he will be worth following. As well as being astonishingly bright, he is a very nice bloke with a wonderful sense of humour.
No Six Nations tomorrow to ease us into the half term week, but a cherished memory from last time around to keep us going. If there was a modern day equivalent to Eric Cantona, and he played my preferred version of football, it would almost certainly be the Scottish fly half, Finn Russell (see also last week). On Saturday, during a fixture in which the Scots have a miserable record and when the outcome was still in doubt, Russell attacked close to the Welsh line attracting the attentions of three defenders, two of whom effected what would ordinarily have been a successful tackle. One went high, one went low, bring the man down and smoother the offload. But this was Russell. Somehow, as he headed rapidly turfwards, he slipped the ball out of the back of his hand to Kyle Steyn who, doing well to gather a pass he could never have imagined receiving, crossed to make the score that started to turn a close, nervy encounter into a rout. It was genius. It was star quality. It was a pass.