I’ve had a 20 year love affair with English football. It began back in 1999. I learned about a British company named Sports Interactive that was publishing a football management computer game, Championship Manager. Back in the day, Championship Manager (which still exists, now as Football Manager) was a niche obsession, a simulation that invites the player to select a soccer club and manage their way to football glory. I knew little about football at the time. The thought of playing a sports game that was more cerebral intrigued me.
I thought it would be easy to manage a big name club, so I chose Manchester United. I was sacked halfway through my first season. Eventually I learned more about tactics and backroom strategy, and before long I was winning the Premier League, and then the Champions League. I was a football management god. I moved on to lower league clubs. I still relish taking Wigan to the semifinals of the FA Cup as a division 2 team in my first season, losing a closely fought match to Arsenal. Play the game long enough and you will see real players retire, replaced in-game by computer-generated players. I still pay homage to Werner Brunner, my virtual soccer legend who scored more than a goal a game during his stint with my virtual Real Madrid team. All hail king Werner…
But here is the thing: back in the day, my football world consisted wholly of virtual players. This was a computer generated fictional world where behavior was determined by the interaction of invisible numbers dictating the movement of players on the pitch. Actions were not visual; everything was described via on-screen text. I knew nothing of the real players. I knew David Beckham as a solid right winger who scored plenty of assists for my team, not as the stunning heartthrob with model-like looks who was married to Victoria Beckham. Jaap Stam was a rock in central defense, but I knew nothing of his gruff, head-shaven, bullish appearance. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Quinton Fortune were capable strikers, but I knew nothing of them as men. I had Manchester United’s team memorized before I ever saw them play in reality. It was hard, after all, to watch live English soccer in the States. Manchester United was one of the few teams an American could watch consistently in the early 2000s. I knew little of Chelsea, Manchester City, or Arsenal, and I knew virtually nothing about any of the other smaller soccer clubs. It was only in the mid-2000s when I was finally able to put real faces and bodies to the computer names that graced my virtual team.
I’m beginning with this digression because it might help you understand the disorienting experience I had today, match day in the UK. I woke up this morning eager to head to a soccer pub to catch the 3 PM Brentford-Leeds match. We are in the UK! I assumed that being in the home country of the English Premier League would make it easy for someone like me, an American who has fallen in love with the English game, to watch a match while surrounded by lusty, chanting, British soccer fans. Watching football should be easy in the UK, or so I thought.
I was wrong.
I made my way to Jericho and passing the Jude the Obscure pub I noticed a television airing the post-game commentary from the early match. Entering, I asked the bartender, “So which match are you showing today?”
He replied, “You mean the evening match?”
I clarified, “No, I mean the one that is about to start.”
“No, pubs can’t air any of the 3 PM matches. We haven’t been able to do that since the 1980s.”
I was perplexed. What’s the deal? I sat in Jude the Obscure sorely disappointed, watching BT Sports commentators discuss what was happening on pitches around the UK. Live score updates streamed across the bottom of the screen. It was almost like watching Championship Manager again. In the early 1990s the UK passed a law prohibiting pubs from airing English football matches between 2:45 and 5:15 PM. Initially the law makes little sense. Why pass a law that makes it more difficult for fans to watch football? I am here to watch a match!
In spite of what seems to be an arbitrary law that adversely impacts football fans like me, I did some digging and learned more about the reasons behind the law. On reflection, I see some logic to it. The law is intended to protect lower league clubs. How so? Consider that English Premier League matches air during the afternoon at the same time as matches from lower tier English soccer leagues (the English football league consists of eight tiers, with teams promoted/relegated each season up and down the pyramid). Oxford itself has two teams in the pyramid: (1) Oxford United, a League 1 team (3rd tier of English football), and (2) Oxford City, a Vanarama South team (6th tier). Lower tier clubs generate much of their revenue from local ticket sales. What happens to ticket sales if these teams have to compete with pubs down the street showing top flight soccer at the same time? With the financial pressures being experienced across the English football world, the law provides one safeguard that ensures that local fans wanting their soccer fix will have an incentive to travel to Kassam stadium to root for the U’s.
I get the logic. It just doesn’t help me as I sit in a pub watching soccer commentators talk about what is happening on the pitch that they are not allowed to show. It also has led me to an unexpected conclusion: we American soccer fans have it good! At the pub today, a local’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when I explained the ease with which Americans are able to watch EPL matches. “Yes, I spend $5 a month for Peacock. It’s a streaming service that gives me access to a live stream of the majority of EPL matches.” That is as much as a pint at the local pub.
Granted, you have to be up around 6:30 AM to watch the early match, and 9:00 AM for the mid-day matches, but I’m not going to complain.
Late in the afternoon I left Jude the Obscure and made my way north to Port Meadow. Rambling past The Perch, I ended my journey at Saint Margaret’s Church in Binsey. St. Margaret’s is an Anglican church that sits on the site of an ancient Saxon church associated with Saint Margaret’s Well. For many years, water from the well was rumored to have healing powers. The church was a place of pilgrimage for many centuries; Henry VIII is known to have visited. The church is also connected to Alice in Wonderland, though I forget exactly how. The students will be going on an Alice in Wonderland ramble in a few weeks. I expect we’ll learn more about the church during the tour.
I’m signing off for the evening. Tomorrow we’ll be heading back to St. Andrew’s, our home church during our first stay in Oxford back in 2012. We’re looking forward to being back in a local church community.
Return to the home page…
You will! I’ll tell you the Alice story On Friday.
Jacque has you covered, so I won’t pontificate. But the story is good fun.
I once read Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard in St. Margaret’s churchyard to a group of ACU students. I am not certain they were spellbound, but it was good fun for me.
On the sign to the right, it looks like it says, “Every Thursday is Open Mic Night.” What is that? Can you… report on that? Or, even better, can you get someone to report on that while you participate in it?