My latest musings on Norwich City Football Club are in today’s Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News.
You can read it online here. I know I’ve posted this rather late to encourage you to buy a paper, but in further I’d urge you to consider it – local papers are really important and they won’t be around for much longer if everyone keeps getting all their news online for nothing.
Here is what my column looks like in print. I’ve no idea who the bloke in the photo at the top is – it’s definitely not me but I can assure you they are my words! They must have made a mistake at the paper.
In the column I talk about Norwich’s 1-0 defeat to Sunderland on Sunday, how irritated I was at the result and how I feel it’s the final nail in the coffin for our hopes of making the play-offs. I also make my feelings clear on the use of pyrotechnics by the crowd, an offence for which three City fans have now been banned from attending matches.
Gary Lineker being taken off the air from his position as the host of the BBC’s Match of the Day is the story that’s dominating the headlines at the moment. The former England striker, who has been the host of the Premier League highlights programme since 1999, is being punished because he won’t apologise for a tweet in which he likened the language used by ministers of the Tory government in relation to its new policy on asylum seekers to “that used by Germany in the 30s”.
Since then, pretty much every presenter, pundit and commentator has said they won’t work for the BBC this weekend in a display of solidarity with Lineker. This includes his most likely replacement as host Mark Chapman, as well as Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Alex Scott. This Saturday’s edition of Match of the Day will be broadcast with no presenter or pundits at all, without any of its usual commentators and with no interviews with players or managers. Other BBC shows, such as Football Focus and Final Score, have been pulled from the schedules because they can’t find anyone willing to work on them.
I will be completely honest with you. I would describe myself very much as left leaning, politically, and I despise the Tory government. I don’t feel that it represents me and I find myself not only unable to support them but frequently disgusted by its actions. I wish for a more compassionate government, one that cares more about its ordinary citizens than the rich and privileged and one that doesn’t actively stir hatred. My wish is that it gets removed from power at the next election.
I agree with Gary Lineker’s tweet. When you start using terms like “illegal immigrant” you stop using terms like “human being”. You start to think of asylum seekers like farmyard animals, or worse, vermin that need to be exterminated. These are living, breathing human beings with thoughts, feelings and families. They are not making extremely dangerous crossings of the English Channel in small and inadequate boats to get a free house and benefits over here. Most of them are fleeing a war or horrific regime the like of which that we can’t really comprehend in this country. I find it astounding that the government is looking to simply move the problem elsewhere rather than attempt to find out why these people are risking their lives to get here and making an effort to address those problems. This doesn’t mean put them up in luxury homes.
The uninitiated might be forgiven for thinking that this story is all about a mere football highlights programme on TV and that it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But it does matter. In removing Lineker from his position, the BBC are effectively saying that you can’t broadcast on their platform if you say something the government doesn’t agree with. And that’s worrying – you might expect this of Russia or China, but not in Britain.
Remember, Lineker has never used his position as the host of Match of the Day to express his political opinions on the programme itself. Such opinions have always been confined to Twitter. The same Twitter that Alan Sugar has used to share several of his political opinions, a lot of them against the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, plenty of them against the rail strikes and the relevant union leaders involved with them, and the not exactly impartial “DONT (sic) VOTE LABOUR”. Yet, the old boy is still allowed to wave his finger around as the face of The Apprentice on primetime BBC One. Could it be that he gets a free ride because his opinions are in support of the Tory government? I wonder.
I don’t know where this story will end up, but I do know the BBC have created an entirely avoidable situation. The furore over Lineker’s tweet was just about quietening down when they announced on Friday night that he’d been taken off the air. In doing so, they’ve made quite the rod for their own back. If it makes some people stop and think about what a sorry state this government has brought to country down to, then it might not have been a waste of time.
The events of the last week will, I think, prove to be a watershed moment for Norwich City Football Club.
Former Huddersfield manager David Wagner is the new man in charge of Norwich City
The displeasure and the disconnect felt by the fans was not only about the club’s repeated inability to put up a fight in the Premier League. It was deeper than that. We felt like we were being taken for granted. The people in power had shut themselves away and lost touch with us. The head coach just didn’t seem to ‘get’ Norwich.
I found myself in the unusual position of directly calling for the manager to be sacked. Norwich isn’t a club that is known for wielding the axe. A manager tends to be given enough – some might say more than enough – time to make their mark and see out a tough time. The end comes when a natural conclusion is reached.
Only thirteen months into the job, however, Dean Smith had to go. Many were sceptical about his appointment in the first place. He would have had to hit the ground running to get those people on board. It wouldn’t have taken much to turn the atmosphere toxic.
On the pitch, Smith failed. It is as simple as that. He was given the job to keep Norwich in the Premier League and they were relegated with a whimper, rock bottom. Then it was to get them straight back up. He left with the automatic promotion places a long way away.
These players haven’t become bad all of a sudden. Several of them have won the Championship title twice with us before. It’s unrealistic to expect them to stroll to a third, but for that squad to be in mid table, looking average at best, is not good enough. Teemu Pukki is a striker with a proven record at this level who would be picked by any other team in the division, yet he is having a quiet season by his standards. Max Aarons had been touted for a lucrative move to some of the world’s biggest clubs, yet his form this season has seen him at times unable to get into the starting eleven. Marcelino Nunez arrived in the summer with a legion of fans in his native Chile, excited about their man showing the English game what he was capable of. He displayed his skill and flair early on but has gone off the boil as time has gone on. My only explanation for this is the way these players have been coached. Dean Smith (and his assistant, Craig “Shakey” Shakespeare) have taken good players and made them worse.
The fans became bored of the ponderous, directionless style of play. As the situation came to a head, they would boo when the ball was played back to the centre halves or goalkeeper. We actually did a lot of playing out from the back under the much loved Daniel Farke, but it always felt like there was a purpose to it. We have memories of many beautiful goals, a culmination of tens of passes, to prove it. The football under Smith was too predictable, too easy to play against, too lacking in entertainment.
When planning to write this, I looked up the records of Norwich’s previous managers and discovered that the percentage of games that we won under Smith (28.57%) was the worst for a permanent coach since the 27 game spell of Gary Megson (18.5%) in 1995-96.
On the pitch, Smith was a write-off. He might be a ‘good bloke’ and a ‘good coach’ – the Aston Villa fans showered him with love when he first came to Norwich, but months down the line admitted that he didn’t really have a plan for a Villa side that didn’t have Jack Grealish in it. He will probably get another job soon (he has already been linked with the vacant position at Portsmouth) and enjoy some modest success. I don’t have any ill will towards the guy now he’s gone. Some managers fit a club and some don’t.
The dull performances and bad results on the field made me refuse to go and watch our home games for two months. I saw the defeat to Luton on 18th October and didn’t return until the draw with Reading on 30th December, the first game after Smith’s sacking. But it wasn’t the actual football that hurt me the most.
The relationship between a football club and its fans is special. Mess with it at your peril. It isn’t about eleven men or women trying to kick a ball into a net. Your football club represents your home. It represents you. For a lot of us, the team’s achievements are our achievements. We feel personal success when they do well.
Norwich is special. The people of this fine city, this fine isolated city, are fiercely proud of it. That is reflected in the football club. We are a club that has always done things differently, where the fans have not been treated as customers but as the lifeblood of the whole thing.
Daniel Farke completely got that. It might seem shallow, but the way he would always applaud every section of the stadium at the end of a game made us feel valued. I was never expecting Dean Smith to wave his arms around and give it the full “olé” to all four corners of Carrow Road, but the bloke never even came on the pitch. It was just a small sign that he was there to work with the players and not with us. He probably never saw it that way but that’s how it felt. That approach never had a long term future at Norwich City.
Daniel Farke always showed his appreciation for the Norwich fans
Smith didn’t seem to like us and his uninspiring press conferences didn’t help either. I became resentful. I didn’t want to look down from the Barclay and see him on the touchline as the face of my club. I used my platform, a column once a month in the Eastern Daily Press, to say the club needed a new manager. I did it twice, actually, and the second time I was stronger. Strong enough that I wondered if they would print it without toning it down. To their credit they did. I obviously had no part to play in Smith leaving, the tide was already going that way, but a week after the second column he was sacked. I could look at my club with optimism again.
The most pleasing thing, for me, was something that the sporting director Stuart Webber said in an interview with Sky Sports on Monday:
“I’ve been here for six years. I’ve had a great time here, a great fanbase with great numbers that turn up. But I probably didn’t appreciate quite how important that connection between the head coach and the fanbase until it wasn’t there.
I’d only known that with Daniel (Farke). We finished 14th in the first season but ultimately the fans wanted to believe in him because the fans had that connection.
It’s not about having a happy clapper that walks on to the pitch to keep the fans happy because that doesn’t work if there’s no substance behind his work.
We as a football club have to be aware that it’s important we get someone that really understands the community, the fanbase because it’s a little bit unique in that respect.”
— Stuart Webber
It seems that, at last, the penny may have dropped. It is not enough to just bring in a manager with strong footballing credentials, they have to be able to connect with the fans.
A shiver went down my spine when I heard the names of Steve Bruce and Chris Wilder mentioned. Two men I certainly don’t want leading my club. But it would appear that they were only rumours, and rumours that were always wide of the mark.
In the end, Webber has returned to someone he has worked with before. Someone he has had success with before. Someone born in Germany. Someone who has previously managed Borussia Dortmund’s reserve team.
Alas, it’s not a stunning return for Daniel Farke. It’s actually a friend of his and his predecessor in that Dortmund job. It’s David Wagner.
Wagner is best known in this country for his time in charge of Huddersfield Town, where he led them to a surprise Premier League promotion via the play-offs in 2017 and then, even more impressively, kept them there with a successful battle against relegation. It was the first time Huddersfield had been in the top flight since 1972. He left in the January of Huddersfield’s second Premier League season with the club eight points adrift of safety, but he remains well liked for his achievements in West Yorkshire and for the Gegenpressing style of play he implemented.
In Wagner, Norwich have a manager in place who is hungry for success after a couple of short spells at Schalke and Swiss side Young Boys. He is likely to have a clear plan for how he wants his team to play, and that plan is likely to have Pukki licking his lips. He will also have the backing of the fans.
This feels right. It feels like it might work. We might just have the manager we need. And if out of all of this we have a hierarchy that will never again underestimate the importance of the fans to Norwich City, these are good times indeed.
England captain Jos Buttler completes the demolition of India in the semi-finals
The T20 World Cup – that is, the global tournament for the short and sweet 20-overs-per-side format of the game – started in Australia on 16th October. The first week saw Ireland, Namibia, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, the West Indies and Zimbabwe compete in two groups of four for four places in the next round. There were shocks – Nambia beat Sri Lanka (2014 winners) in the very first game and Scotland beat the West Indies. The West Indies were actually eliminated in this first round – the 2012 and 2016 champions were out before the tournament had really got going.
Ireland, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe progressed to the Super 12 stage, where they were joined by Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa in two more groups of six. The top two in each group would go through to the semi-finals. Australia, the hosts and last year’s winners, were thrashed by New Zealand in their first game. Pakistan lost a thriller to arch-rivals India, then were beaten by Zimbabwe to leave them on the brink of going out.
Australia won the World Cup last year but failed to get out of the group stage here
The weather was a problem early on. The tournament was being played very early in the Australian spring, so rain caused issues in several games – Afghanistan’s two chances to play at the enormous, world famous Melbourne Cricket Ground were both washed out. South Africa would have beaten Zimbabwe had the rain not come down, a dropped point that would prove very costly indeed. The tasty clash between Australia and England did not see a ball bowled. England were stuttering in a run chase against Ireland before the weather forced an early ending, with the Irish earning a famous win on the Duckworth/Lewis/Stern method.
New Zealand were the early form horses, but England beat them and then completed a nervy win over Sri Lanka to knock Australia out of their own competition and progress to the semi-finals. On the final day of the Super 12s, South Africa suffered a shock defeat to the Netherlands to open the door for the winner of the Bangladesh v Pakistan match to go through at their expense. That beneficiary was Pakistan, into the semi-finals when days before it looked like they were heading home.
Pakistan are in the T20 World Cup final for the third time – they won it in 2009
In the first semi-final, Pakistan fielded superbly and their captain Babar Azam and wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan enjoyed their best opening partnership of the tournament to see off New Zealand. On Thursday, a feverish India-supporting crowd in Adelaide watched on in shock as England chased down 169 without losing a wicket and with four overs to spare. Jos Buttler’s team hit top gear at just the right time, thrashing the much-fancied Indians. It means the tournament is denied the glamorous, money-spinning grudge match of a final that India vs Pakistan would have been, but England and Pakistan deserve to be there. The two sides played out a thrilling seven-match T20 series a few weeks before the World Cup, with England winning 4-3, so hopes are high for an entertaining final and a worthy winner.
Up to now, the entire tournament has been hidden behind the paywall of Sky Sports, but they have graciously done a deal with Channel 4 so that the final will be live for all to see on free-to-air television. If you’re not a cricket fan, I urge you to tune in – T20 is fast, exciting and England might just win a World Cup. And that’s not something that’s going to happen in Qatar.
T20 World Cup 2022 – Final England v Pakistan Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia Sunday 13th November 2022, 8am GMT Channel 4
England vs South Africa 1st Test (of 3) Lord’s, London 17th, 18th, 19th August 2022 Result: South Africa (326) beat England (165 & 149) by an innings and 12 runs
The latest issue of The Cricketer magazine was laying on the doormat when I got home from work on Friday. Its front cover asked the question: “Can the Proteas’ pace attack puncture Bazball?”. As I was unwrapping it, on my television the tall South African seamer Marco Jansen bowled James Anderson to seal a thumping win for the tourists inside three days. The early evidence would suggest the answer to that question is “yes”.
The first half of the English Test summer had been full of positivity. New captain Ben Stokes and new coach Brendon McCullum combined to instill a never-say-die attitude into the ailing red ball side, an aura of self-belief that carried England to four wins in a row. They benefited from New Zealand suffering from a lack of form and a spate of injuries – their best batter, Kane Williamson, is going through one of the worst patches of his career and their best bowler, Trent Boult, was wary having just taken part in a full-on season of the Indian Premier League. Colin de Grandhomme and Kyle Jamieson both succumbed to injury during the series and had to fly home. Yet, the Black Caps were in a position to win each of the three matches. At Lord’s, they had England on the ropes in the fourth innings but took the wickets of Stokes off a no ball, a reprieve that proved fatal. Then in Nottingham, a Jonny Bairstow inspired England powered to a final day chase that would previously have been seen as impossible. At Headingley, the home side were 55 for 6 in their first innings but were rescued by Bairstow and Jamie Overton.
It went down in the record books as a series whitewash, but closer inspection reveals a story that wasn’t so one-sided. India were also sent packing in the Test rescheduled from last year, at Edgbaston, though you wonder how. Rishabh Pant made a brilliant hundred on the first day, then on the second Stuart Broad was whacked for a record 35 off one over. India were on top for so much of the game but didn’t bowl well in the final innings and Bairstow and Joe Root made the chase look easy. England’s daring new approach to the Test format is undoubtedly exciting – they back themselves to play their natural games, never give up and when one falls short they believe they will always have someone who will step up. The media coined it Bazball, named after the Kiwi coach in the sunglasses with the beard who looked cooly on from the balcony. The squad and the management themselves hate the term. They feel it cheapens what they’re doing and is used on social media to poke fun at the England team when it doesn’t all go to plan.
It’s safe to say it didn’t go to plan this week. The series against South Africa had an oddly low key build up. It started six weeks after the India match ended, following a block of mostly disappointing white ball cricket and with the Hundred and the new football season in full swing. The first match was over so quickly that there is a chance some will not have noticed it. There had been plenty of chat in the days before the game, with South Africa captain Dean Elgar giving his opinion on Bazball (he’s not a fan) and Sam Billings giving his response. Billings had just captained an England Lions team (second string) to a big win over South Africa, in which they amassed 672 at nearly a run a ball. There was a bit of spice about the series not usually seen outside an Ashes. Elgar’s team had to back it up.
South Africa captain Dean Elgar
They did. All of England’s victories so far in the summer had come from chasing in the final innings, so Elgar turned the tables by putting Stokes’s men into bat on Wednesday morning. Then the mightily impressive South Africa pace bowlers got to work. Before long, England were 55 for 4 with both Root and Bairstow out for a combined 8 runs. The summer of 2022 has been characterised by very hot and dry weather, so naturally the first day of a Test match lasted just more than one session before it was abandoned due to heavy rain.
It didn’t take long for South Africa to wrap up the England innings on Thursday. All out for 165 in just 45 overs. Ollie Pope, with 73, was the only batter able to offer any resistance. Kagiso Rabada took 5-52. South Africa’s openers then demonstrated anti-Bazball, if you will, seeing off the new ball nicely and putting on 85 for the first wicket until Elgar was extremely unfortunate to deflect an innocuous Anderson delivery with his arm onto his stumps. His opening partner, Sarel Erwee, ground out 73 from 146 balls – by no means an attractive innings, but one that put his side in control. England should take note. All but two of the South Africans made it into double figures, compared to the four that got past single digits in the England innings. They were all out for 326 in the 90th over, 161 runs ahead.
Kagiso Rabada took 7 wickets in the match
Zak Crawley was the first to go, as usual, in what must surely be his final appearance for a while in the England side. They seem to have such confidence in him that it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he were to line up at Old Trafford on Thursday, but with form players waiting in the wings, I just cannot see how the Kent man can continue wasting a place in the batting order. After Crawley, it was a procession of England wickets as their innings lasted a mere 37.4 overs. Only a fifty partnership between Stokes and Stuart Broad delayed the inevitable. South Africa had won by an innings – they had not just beaten England, they had embarrassed them.
Let’s not pretend otherwise. For a team to be beaten by an innings within three days (don’t forget, the first day was largely washed out) – at home, especially – that’s bad. Lord’s will have to refund all the ticket holders for the weekend. Against the top teams, England have to realise that they are not always going to be able to assert their own style on the game. They are going to have to adapt to a situation, to play smart cricket. It was the lack of smart cricket that bothered me the most. It’s fine being ultra-positive, always setting attacking fields and playing the attacking shots, but at times the game demands that you think sensibly and do what is required to find a way back in. If that means keeping the flow of runs down for a while or blocking out a session, so be it. I’m all for the Bazball intention of having utter belief in your ability, but please use your brains. Oh, and drop Zak Crawley.
The second Test starts on Thursday 25th August, 11am at Old Trafford, Manchester.
This is going to be a tad niche, even going by the previous things I’ve written. What follows will only be of interest to you if you’ve played the computer game FIFA. A hugely successful game, yes, and one that tops the charts every year, but I doubt something my usual readers will have had much to do with.
The next edition, FIFA 23, is coming out at the end of September and having owned every one since 2001 I’m seriously considering not buying it. It’s because it feels like it’s increasingly being made for a younger audience, an audience that speaks a different language to me. All the nonsense about “xG”, “top bins” and a new goal celebration called “The Griddy” – this isn’t the football I know and love. It is also obsessed with its Ultimate Team mode (which makes developer EA an absolute fortune), and I have no interest in it.
I have always liked playing Career Mode, where I can put myself in the game as a manager and take over pretty much any club in the game. Invariably, this would start off with me taking charge of my beloved Norwich City. You can play out fifteen seasons, and as well as playing each match you could buy and sell players and bring youth players through.
But there’s so much more this mode could do. In terms of youth scouting, you hire a scout who you can send on a trip. You determine where they go, how long for and what sort of players they are looking for. Each month the scout will send you a report listing the players they’ve found. The list will show roughly how good the player is now and roughly how good the scout thinks the player could become. How accurate these assessments are depends on how good the scout is, i.e. how much you’re paying them. You can then choose to sign the player, reject them or scout them for a bit longer.
The trouble is, if you sign a player they are simply added to a youth squad that doesn’t do anything. There are no Under 18 or Under 23 teams in the game, so youth players just remain on this list until you either promote them to the first team or they get fed up and threaten to leave. The players do very gradually improve, but if you’re managing a Premier League or Championship club they are very rarely good enough to play in the first team straight away. You usually end up selling them for a nice little profit and then you might come across them playing against you a few years later, but there’s very little for you in developing a young player in the mode’s current state.
What FIFA’s career mode really needs is a proper system of U18 and U23 leagues. The young players you’ve scouted could then play some games against other clubs’ academies, keeping them happy and providing them with tangible ways to improve. The manager of these sides could provide you with a report on each match, telling you the result and who played well and who didn’t. The U23s would also be an opportunity to give players who need game time in your main squad a run out. Perhaps FIFA could even go really deep and allow you to start your career managing an U18 or U23 side yourself, rising through the ranks to eventually take the reins of the first team. This would give career mode a whole new dynamic, giving you an incentive to stay at a club for a number of years to see these young players you’ve scouted break through and become mainstays in your first team.
Now I’d like to move on to international management. At present, you have to start off managing a club and then when you start making a name for yourself you are offered a job managing a national team. If you accept, however, you don’t leave your club side – you continue to manage it alongside whichever country you’ve accepted the offer from. This is most unrealistic, unheard of really in actual football. FIFA should allow you to manage a national team and only a national team. You should be able to request scouting reports on players you can pick in your squad, organise friendlies and training camps, and take your side into a World Cup or contintental competition. This would make you feel more involved and therefore care more about the country you’re in charge of – at the moment the international breaks feel like a chore and an unwanted intteruption to managing your club.
Those are my two biggest wishes for career mode. There’s more I could say, and more I could ask for from the rest of the game. Quick substitutes, for instance. But it’s clear that FIFA 23 will be another cash cow, unwilling to make the changes to truly put it amongst the elite. This year’s edition will be the final one to bear the FIFA name – can we hope for better from the new iteration, EAFC? I won’t hold my breath.
A reminder: cricket is the best sport in the world. I feel it worth reminding everyone because I’m about to spend a few minutes chewing my nails about its current state and future direction.
If you’re not a dedicated follower of the game, you would be forgiven for thinking that all is well and that cricket is entering the national consciousness more than it has done for some time. You may have noticed that BBC Two have shown a couple of matches from the first week of the Hundred tournament, and that cricket has also been a part of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
The Hundred is controversial because, while its outward intention is noble in attempting to get new fans interested in cricket, it has gone about this by implying that the traditional game can’t be sold to the public. The fundamentals – such as an over consisting of six balls – have been thrown out of the window, creating a whole new format that no one else in the world plays and bears little resemblence to the others. If the Hundred is meant to be gaining new fans for cricket, what is the point of changing the rules to the extent that those new fans will find it difficult to get into Test matches or One Day Internationals?
Aside from the format, the Hundred disposes of the traditional county teams and is competed for by sides that reek of a marketing agency brainstorming session. If you think the Manchester Originals and the Welsh Fire sound tacky, you should see their logos. Obviously, in England we only have a few months of the year to play cricket so adding the Hundred to the calendar has raised serious questions about overly packed schedules and player burnout. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have made it clear that the Hundred is their marquee tournament – it gets the biggest marketing budget – and therefore it gets the prime place in the summer, during the school holidays. The T20 Blast, which since its inception in 2003 had been English cricket’s great domestic money spinner, was done and dusted by the time the kids broke up.
Hampshire won the 2022 T20 Blast, but you’d be forgiven for having missed it
Personally, I’m not a fan. I may have been a cricket devotee for twenty years but I’m not one of those pig-headed enough to think the game doesn’t have to appeal to new audiences. Ever since England internationals were sold to Sky in 2006, the game has waned in its relevance to the public. Children aren’t becoming obsessed by the sport by stumbling across it on Channel 4, like I did. Players like Joe Root and Ben Stokes should be rock stars, yet they could walk down most streets unnoticed. The Hundred does at least put cricket back on terrestrial television, yet in my opinion at an unnecessarily high cost. Pumping the same money into the T20 Blast, pushing it into the public eye on BBC TV at the height of summer would surely have had the same effect.
I do still watch the Hundred. It is still cricket, and I doubt the impact of an individual boycotting something like that. But when I see the BBC Two coverage starting with a sort of rap/hip hop tune in its opening titles, I get the impression that this tournament isn’t for me. Every effort is made to appeal to young people, to ‘urbanise’ the game, and in a way it feels like a bit of an insult to cricket itself because the game is already great. I feel nothing for the teams, being made up and not steeped in any kind of history of tradition, and it takes me a while to remember who won its first edition last year (it was Southern Brave).
So for all the Hundred is doing in appealing to new fans, it leaves us with a summer schedule bursting at the seams. Ben Stokes, arguably England’s most exciting player, withdrew from the tournament last summer as well as all other forms of cricket to prioritise his mental health. This year, he announced before it had even started that he wasn’t going to play in it before retiring from ODIs, citing having to play too often as one of the reasons for his decision. Having only just turned 31 and three years on from almost single-handedly winning the World Cup for England, these should be the prime years of his career so it should be a significant warning to the authorities that he felt his only option was to walk away.
Ben Stokes played his last ODI in July, before retiring from the format at the age of 31
The Hundred is just one of many domestic tournaments around the world that cricketers can sign up for. Unlike football, the international game has traditionally been seen as the most important and most lucrative. This has changed dramatically since the Indian Premier League (IPL) was launched in 2008. According to an article by Tim Wigmore in the August issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly, the IPL’s latest broadcasting rights deal will see each live match generate £12 million – out of all the sports leagues in the world, only the NFL (American Football) is more lucrative. Keen to grab their own slice of the pie, other tournaments have popped up all over the world. There is the Big Bash in Australia, the Pakistan Super League, and a new one that is due to launch in the United Arab Emirates early next year.
The Indian Premier League has been an astonishing success
Professional cricketers can earn life changing sums of money from playing in these tournaments all over the world. Only players from India, Australia and England could hope to earn as much from playing for their countries. This has left players with extraordinary decisions to make, and increasingly they are prioritising representing an IPL franchise over playing for their nations. It’s a worrying situation, and the Hundred is only adding to the headache.
It’s going to take some time for the relegation hangover to clear for this Norwich City team. The first home game of the new season, with its warm sunshine, fresh kits and sense of optimism, was met with a performance that lacked quality and coherence. Back in my seat in the Barclay for the first time since 23rd April, here are a few thoughts I had from the Wigan game.
Some of these players have got a lot to prove
I may get shot down in flames for this but every Ben Gibson error at the back and every failed Milot Rashica cross made me wonder: do these players have a future at Norwich? Gibson, Rashica, Todd Cantwell and Josh Sargent all failed to inspire and they have a lot to prove in the games ahead. Dean Smith will be aware that a poor start to the season would put his job on the line so he can’t afford any passengers.
We still can’t take a corner
Back in June, Norwich appointed Allan Russell as the club’s first ever dedicated set piece coach. Whatever he’s been doing at Colney, it has yet to translate onto the pitch. It’s extraordinary how Norwich never look like scoring from a corner, and they don’t look assured when they are defending them either. This is nothing new but with someone in place purely to work on them, it’s something you’d expect to improve going forward.
Between a rock and a VAR-d place
No one likes VAR. No one likes the way it takes half an hour out of the game and then they still get the decisions wrong. But then, the referee at Carrow Road was really rather poor and Norwich should have had at least one penalty. If we’d had the dreaded VAR, maybe we’d have got what we deserved.
Wigan’s behaviour should be seen as a positive for Norwich
The time wasting from Wigan in the second half, which saw multiple players booked, should be taken as a compliment by Norwich. Clearly, for last season’s League One champions, a point at Carrow Road is a great result. City need to get used to teams that defend deep and waste time like they did today and learn how to break them down.
Two games down, forty-four to go. Norwich are yet to register a win – they go to Hull next Saturday – but these are very early days. With the new players bedding in, patience is the order of the day.
England are the champions of Europe. I, and no one else who holds their national pride through the prism of sport, will ever tire of saying that.
The power of sport is incredible. It brings people together, it divides them, it captures the nation’s attention and it even brings about huge changes in society. I am so grateful to have sport in my life and I don’t know what I would do without it. On Sunday afternoon, I rushed home from work to watch the final on TV. A peak audience of 17.4 million tuned into the BBC, making it the most watched women’s football match ever on UK television.
The match itself was an emotional wrangle. It was tense throughout, the two finalists were well matched and clearly the two best teams in the tournament. Ella Toone’s sublime finish gave England the lead in the second half, only for Germany to level through Lina Magull. Tabea Wassmuth dragged England captain Leah Williamson out of position, allowing Magull the space to finish.
At that point, I felt like the Germans just hadn’t read the script. Like the Italian men last year. This wasn’t their story. The Wembley crowd – 87,192, a record for a Euros match for men or women – were desperate for England to go all the way and put the crowning glory on a fantastic tournament. On the radio on the way home from work, I heard a German journalist say “Germany wants to win it. England needs to win it.” He was right. England had done so well, but they really needed to make that final step.
Extra time came and the dreaded penalty shootout was looming. Everyone knows we don’t beat the Germans at penalties. Thank heavens, then, for Chloe Kelly poking the ball over the line from a (North Walsham born) Lauren Hemp corner and putting England back in front with ten minutes to go. The celebrations were wild. For once, England weren’t following the script.
The way England saw out the game was masterful. Keeping it in the corner, drawing cheap fouls from the increasingly frustrated Germans, not giving them a sniff of coming back. Then, the referee (who had a really poor game, by the way) put the whistle to her lips. She waited a couple of seconds and then blew. No one knew what to do with themselves. England had won Euro 2022, the country’s first major tournament victory in football since 1966.
Here, we were embracing each other in pure delight. It feels so good because it happens so rarely. Germany, for instance, were aiming to win the Women’s Euros for the ninth time. It wouldn’t have felt so joyous and momentous for them. England, with the years of dreaming, the heartbreak, the near-misses… it all felt like it was leading up to that moment.
I have spent a lot of time and energy arguing with men – and it is always men – on Twitter about women’s sport. Tired clichés about how ‘no one cares’, ‘the standard is shocking’, ‘they should be in the kitchen’. Well, last night they were categorically rendered incorrect and irrelevant. I just love sport and I don’t care if the people playing it are male or female. The quarter-final against Spain and the final against Germany comfortably matched the quality of any men’s football match I can think of, and I am so proud that this incredibly likeable squad will have inspired women and girls across the country to start playing and to dream big.
It’s been an amazing few years for women’s sport in the UK. England won the cricket World Cup in 2017, Emma Raducanu won the US Open last year at the age of just 18, and the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games are the first to award more gold medals to women than men. It’s wonderful to see.
So, if you’re one of those blokes who avoided the game yesterday because you feel threatened and intimidated by seeing a woman play sport, I have a question for you:
My view of England v South Africa, Old Trafford, Manchester, 22nd July 2022
I’ve been back from my holiday for a week now, but as these things often do, it feels like a lot longer!
I usually go away around my mum’s birthday (19th July) and this year was no different. In 2021, we stayed in Salford to make it easy to get to Old Trafford for a T20 cricket match between England and Pakistan. On this occasion, we actually stayed in a hotel right in the middle of Manchester.
The Portland Hotel, Manchester
My room was on the third floor of the hotel, with mum and her other half Dave a couple of doors down. It was clean and comfortable with a Queen size bed. You could hear the trams rumbling through the city centre, but rather than being irritating it was actually quite a pleasant sound.
On our first night, we walked across the road into Piccadilly Gardens and found a fan park dedicated to the Women’s Euro 2022. There you could buy merchandise, eat and drink, and watch the matches on a big screen. I had been enjoying the tournament and England had North Walsham’s Lauren Hemp in their squad, so it was fun following the progress of the Norfolk girl. Our first night in Manchester happened to be the night of England’s quarter final against Spain, so we sat in the fan park with hundreds of others and cheered the Lionesses on.
The fan park in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens
England went behind – conceding a goal for the first time in the tournament – but battled back to win 2-1 in extra time. The atmosphere was fantastic and it really made you feel part of the event.
The moment the final whistle went in the fan park
The next day, we had booked to go to the National Football Museum. I’d been to the museum a couple of times before, but there is so much to see that there’s no chance you’ll ever see it all. We spent two-and-a-half hours browsing the exhibits, which include the original written laws of the game, the ball used in the 1966 World Cup final and a seat from the original Wembley stadium. Afterwards, we did a bit of shopping. I used to hate buying clothes but these days I actually quite enjoy it.
The National Football Museum
Friday was the day of the One Day International between England and South Africa – the reason for our trip up north. Now, cricket is obviously the best sport in the world but, famously, it is at the mercy of the weather. You can’t play cricket in the rain. Not because the players are wimps, but because water and a cork ball wrapped in leather don’t mix. Opening the curtains, I was met with typical Manchester weather – grey skies, damp pavements and drizzly rain.
Undeterred, we were at the ground when the gates opened at 11am. We were well aware that the game wasn’t going to start at the scheduled time of 1pm. We went to the club shop, we had a drink, and then a chance encounter meant my mum got a photo with England’s star batter Jonny Bairstow!
Mum and Jonny Bairstow
At one point we thought the match would be abandoned without a ball being bowled, but the weather did eventually relent for long enough for us to get a game on. Play finally began at 4.45pm, reduced to 29 overs per side from the 50 it was supposed to be. England were sent into bat and I didn’t think they played that well, being bowled out for 201 towards the end. It turned out to be more than enough, however, as South Africa were bowled out for just 83 to give England a win by 118 runs.
We (literally) squeezed onto a tram to make the 15 minute journey back to our hotel, pleased that we’d seen a match despite the rain and that England had won.
On Saturday afternoon, after a leisurely breakfast we travelled back to Norfolk in the car. On Sunday, it was back to work…
LEE PAYNE 