Sunday Sermon

The win at Sunderland was frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying fare. God knows why anyone pays to go and watch them up there. Niall Quinn wants to devote his energies to thanking those that do show up opposed to berating those who don’t.

There’s a serious issue here though. Those fiendish pubs broadcasting ‘bent’ satellite schedules are actually a part of the community in my book. One that’s poorly looking and might not last. I hope that the challenge mounted by that landlady in Portsmouth comes off. Am I alone in questioning that paying one company through the eyeballs for the privilege is actually progress?

I like buying meat from a butcher and finding one these days is as easy as finding someone who doesn’t know who Simon Cowell is. The nearest butchers to me displays joints and sausages in it’s window like pieces in a museum. Their trade obliterated by an Asda that fell out the sky not a six minute walk away.

The financial reality is that these back street and not so back street boozers beaming in images of the sacred stars will simply not survive without football and they cannot afford to be held hostage by those who currently own the rights. All that’ll be left are Neverspoons and the wanna-be gastro pubs.

Neverspoons administer their last rights daily via a drip feed of bulk bought booze to the long term unemployed, unhappy, unwashed, unloved. No football to disturb the peace. No conversation to disturb the mind. ‘Y’alright Tom?’ ‘Yeah, you Sean?’ If you stay long enough you can’t separate the scent of stale urine from the fresh.

The other survivor will be the Gastro Pub 4.0. These joints make my skin crawl as much as the chain pubs, but at least I feel less in need of delousing on the way out. These aren’t pubs they’re are a sham. They aren’t pubs as I understand the definition. No one’s even trying to get drunk. The only recorded vomiting is an incident involving a woman who bundled a pot of Cow & Gate down her child too quickly.

Let’s dispel a few myths while we’re here. Ron & Carol who welcome you to the The Albion aren’t some charming couple who intertwine their own lives (his functional alcoholism and both of her affairs) with keeping you topped up…

They’re faceless micro-managers from the planet Vatincluded who don’t just know their mass produced, part deep-fryed  menu off by heart, but they know their customers on sight.

Walk in on your own to one of these places and order a pint and and you may as well have sauntered into your local library and confidently asked to be directed to the Child Porn section. ‘Will you be eating?’ Actually translates to ‘Are you a potential nuisance?’

So Niall Quinn masks the threat of boot-boys clutching Court Orders with a friendly anecdote about Sir Alex looking at his watch wanting to get the heck out of Dodge because a full house at the Stadium Of Light was deadlier than Delia when it came to the 12th man. His vision is of good clean family safe fun is @£22 per person but the cost will be considerably greater.

His vision will leave us in this post apocalyptic wasted-land of boarded up juicers passed by a disparate, broken tribe of emotionally disfigured survivors foraging on a diet of patronising highlights and meals which all include a side salad or 135gm sized portion of chips.

What did have we actually learned here? We need a striker who can score.