Howards Way - Will It Be Plain Saling For The Aussies

With due apologies to all our readers in Wales who probably don’t want to think about rugby right now, there was a story related the oval ball that our eyes here at Football Business last week.

Pat Howard, the former Leicester Tigers player and coach was appointed as General Manager of Cricket Australia.

Australia, you probably don’t need reminding – but lets do it anyway because its fun – have slip down the Test Match rankings and sit now amongst the also-rans. In the wake of the Ashes disaster in the winter Cricket Australia have conducted a review of how they intend to get back to the top of the world. And the man they choose to help them implement their vision for that is Howard.

Reaction to the appointment is mixed. A quick look at the Cricinfo website and you will soon see comments that are typical: “Would Rugby appoint a cricketer?” Says one. “When baking bread we appoint bakers to the job, you should consider the same approach. I think for Rugby Union he would be great,” reasons another.

And that, generally, is the attitude of most sports people too as well as the public. That we don’t understand because we haven’t played the game – or in Howard’s case the right game.

The man himself was unequivocal in his excitement: “It is a great opportunity for anyone in sports leadership,” he commented. And surely it’s the last two words in this sentence that are the key.

It’s not like they have appointed a bloke off the street to do the job. It’s not like they have come up to me and said: “go on then, have a go.” Pat Howard has been a superb coach, he has played top level sport and he is steeped in experience. Are we really, in sport, so insular that we don’t believe skills can be transferable?

To take the argument down to a really simple level, I drive a Ford Focus. That doesn’t mean, though, that I am unable to drive any other sorts of car. The beauty of experience is that those experiences can be used elsewhere. For example, in Football Business we have franchisees from many different walks of life. Some ran businesses before, some did not. Some are young, some are, shall we say, more mature – its not like we say that people are precluded or can’t run a business because they haven’t before and to judge Pat Howard before he has had the chance to do anything is bizarre.

There is a saying that “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you’ve always got.” So credit Cricket Australia for thinking outside the box.

As an English cricket fan I would be lying if I said I wished him well, however. Bitterness is also a transferable skill.

Friendlies Fired - Because Players Are Tired

There is an article today in the Daily Mirror that explains how Blackburn Rovers co-owner Balaji Rao has personally paid the expenses of three Blackburn fans who went to India to watch their team’s friendly in Pune last week.

The story highlights how Rao, who had paid for nine other fans to go, heard the story of the other three and paid for them too.

Tremendously laudable from the under-fire Indian Chicken magnate and more power to him. Football Business is always behind moves to make football more affordable and more accessible to fans.

But the real question which still begs itself is this:  Why were Rovers even there in first place?

Of course we already know the answer to that – money. The same reason that Manchester United and Manchester City went to America to play pointless games in the summer. The same reason as the Emirates Cup exists, and all those other ridiculous games take place every summer. Some sort of nonsensical “brand awareness” exercise.

Of course, Blackburn’s case is a little different, given the nature of the ownership there, but really was it the best planning to take the squad out to India for a friendly in the International Break?

Manager Steve Kean is just about public enemy number one in that part of Lancashire – more demonstrations against him are planned, and along with Steve Bruce, he is the real “dead man walking” of the Premier League and I’ll bet you that despite his outward positivity for the trip he is secretly fuming at having to go. But, as we all know in a job, we all have to do what our boss tells us ultimately so go he has.

There is nothing (ok very little) that annoys us at the Football Business HQ than players/managers and everybody else bleating about players being tired (you might have noticed we bang on about it on blogs). And that being the case, please can we make a plea:

If anyone, player, manager and above all Chairman at Blackburn Rovers uses the excuse that the players were tired/leggy/jaded (delete your cliché as appropriate) then we all have the right to scream “YOU WENT TO INDIA!!!”

In an age where Manager’s and players complain about too many games and view the Carling Cup (you know, proper silverware) as a distraction to be avoided, doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that a squad can – in its week off – fly halfway round the world to play basically what amounts to a kickabout?

If they are that desperate for match practice then we know of a Thursday night league in the area we could sell them at a knockdown price!

Same goes for Liverpool and Rangers by the way, who meet for who knows what reason next Tuesday – what is that, a consolation for teams that didn’t get into the Europa League?

I wonder what sort of team either side will put out, and I wonder who will care in the slightest. I have just checked the Rangers Website and prices are an eye-watering £18-25! Anyone who goes to that game deserves a medal!

There’s loads of 5 a side leagues on a Tuesday too – get out and play in one of them instead.

Hard Working Players - Dont Make Me Laugh - Just Ask Delroy

Last week on the Football Business blog I wrote a piece about overseas TV rights. In it I quoted Alex Ferguson. Sir Alex had talked about the demands on his players and said: "You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves... there'd be no chance."


I was thinking about those comments on Sunday when Stoke boss Tony Pulis (who had last month talked about how pampered his players were compared to those Welsh Miners who died in the awful tragedy and said he wouldn’t use tiredness as an excuse) said “it was mentally tough to play three games a week” and admitted his players “looked leggy.”


It’s not without precedent of course, we are coming to that time of year when Steve Bruce (for it is always him) will witter on about needing a winter break when faced with a “crazy” Christmas schedule and there are countless other football figures will talk about “too many games” and how things are “unfair.”
When I was thinking about these moaning, bleating football figures the name Delroy Spencer popped into my head.


Don’t worry if the name means nothing to you. It didn’t to me until about three weeks ago when I was watching boxing on TV.
The main fights had finished early, so they showed something from the undercard. The fight they picked was a Super Bantamweight clash between Paul Butler (a highly rated youngster) and the aforementioned Delroy.


They brought Delroy’s record up on screen before the bout. He is 43, which was the first thing that caught my eye – he must be phenomenally fit to make that weight at that age (I am slightly younger than that and haven’t been that weight since I was about 10!)


Then there is his record. That fight against Butler was the 139th of a career that can hardly be described as glittering. Of the previous 138 he had been victorious just 12 times. Losing 121 and drawing the others.
He lost this one too – on points with the younger, faster man winning every round – but that’s not the point. Promoters up and down the country know they can rely on Spencer to give his best whenever he’s called upon.


And he’s called upon a lot. A quick scan of Boxing Website Boxrec shows that most weeks Delroy is gloving up to fight some young prospect or other and good luck to him.
That is what these football managers need to understand (as well as the players in the wake of the Carlos Tevez affair), that for every person in the stands that would give their right arm to do what they do, there is somebody else who plays the game for the love of it (or at least very meagre wages.)


And those – and those even lower down the football food chain, those who play Sunday league, or dare we venture, 5 and 6 a side football are the sort of people who can – and should – feel insulted every time someone says footballers work too hard.
Delroy Spencer could to. But he’s in Scotland and Doncaster in the next three weeks if you fancy watching him – he’s fighting two lads on their debuts, so he’s probably too busy training for his next bout to care.