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.
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.
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