The Leisure Review: Row Z

Row Z edition 77; dateline 4 June 2013

Sport England stretch their briefs
With the news that CIMPSA has been funded by Sport England (see the editorial if you can’t believe it either) being swiftly followed by the equally unlikely revelation that Sporta – the “membership association that represents cultural and leisure trusts and social enterprises throughout the UK” – has also been given a wedge by the national agency for sports development, Sidey has been led to think that Row Z should make an approach to our BFF, the fragrant Mrs Teasdale. Jennie, as we like to call her, would surely give us a few thousand quid if we could just work out why she has funded Sporta, a body with as much relevance to grassroots sport as the Women’s Institute, though not as worthy. Intrigued and excited about getting money for nothing, we instructed the latest intern to find out just what the bunce was supposed to be for. Sadly, a morning on social media and one visit to Sporta.org revealed nothing as, for some reason, Sporta haven’t included Jennie’s generous gift in its news pages and only a solitary tweet from their fragrant and wonderful PR person (they’re not all total numpties) reveals that, whatever it was for and however much it was, it has been used to fund “new staff”.

Tales of Chatsworth, east of Urmston
So farewell then, Shameless, “Paul Abbott's critically acclaimed, offbeat drama about the rollercoaster lives and loves of the dysfunctional Gallagher clan”. After nine years and eleven series you have thrown your last party. The joke about the comedy drama being in fact a documentary has long since worn as thin as some of the later series’ relationships to the original’s wit and wisdom but we have it on the authority of the Floppy Haired Intern (see Row Z passim) that in 2007 on taking up a place at a southern university known for accommodating the thicker children of the ruling class when the franchise was still burgeoning he had to explain, often slowly and using simple phrases, that the Chatsworth estate, though fictionalised, was based on real estates around Manchester, itself a real city full of real people who really did have to endure that kind of reality. Nobs.

Initial confusion for safeguarding body
Many a grassroots club volunteer breathed a sigh of relief when the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) closed its doors, and not just those who were following the age-old tradition of using sport to target vulnerable youngsters for sexual abuse or those whose “coaching style” bordered on systematic bullying. No, many a caring, concerned and considered club helper was glad to see the back of the bureaucracy engendered by trying to safeguard children just a little too punctiliously and looked forward to the day when the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) meant checks would be portable and forms would make sense. Alas, we seem still to be on that journey and the man who comes in to pretend to mend the photocopier which nobody actually uses and who coaches the local basketball club has passed us a message from Karen Leech who is Head of Media, External Relations and Marketing for the DBS (her caps). It says: ”To ensure the law is followed correctly, we need Registered Bodies to bring the following change to the applicants [sic] attention when completing the form: Question e55 asks the applicant: 'have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence or received a caution, reprimand or warning?' Applicants should now ignore this question and instead treat this question as if they were being asked: 'do you have any unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands or warnings?'” Not head of communications then, Kazza?

A season’s greeting from Bath FC
We have to thank the good people of Bath Rugby – formerly Bath Football Club – for letting us know that we can invest some of our hard-earned in a season ticket to watch their boys run around at The Rec next season. It seems that sitting down to watch The Mighty Bath – they don’t have an Americanised soubriquet such as Tigers or Saints so we needs must call them by their more appropriate (if now slightly out of date) nickname – for all of the “16 regular season games” will cost somewhere between £300 and £500; or we could stand up and pay £278. Whether this works out as a sound investment depends, no doubt, on whether you like rugby union, like Bath or like the fresh-faced young men whom the club has acquired to wear its kit next year. Being of a northern persuasion and not all that au fait with who Jonathan Joseph might be, Sideliner will be keeping hold of the petty cash for the time being.

Too many steps too far
So sad to hear that, on the 60th anniversary of Tensing Norgay and Edmund Hilary being the first people acknowledged by Western media to have climbed Everest, bucket-list tourists are causing traffic jams at places like the Hilary Step as they wait to “conquer” a peak made as accessible as Snowdon by fixed ropes, oxygen and the one-to-one attention of Sherpa guides. Critic Graham Hoyland, a mountaineer of the old school apparently, descries the Everest industry, saying, “It isn’t a wilderness experience – it’s a McDonalds experience.” Sidey, of course, hates McDonalds, citing the homogenisation of food, the forced proximity with crowds of, frankly, not very nice people and the bloody litter, so we shall be standing for a minute in solemn acknowledgement of the first ascent, shaking our heads sadly at what’s become of the great mountain since and opening a bottle of Cobra to help wash the bad taste out of our mouths. We may even spit.

Credit where credit is due
In the item on Volunteers Week in the news page in this issue it was noted that there is a danger of volunteers thanking volunteers for volunteering could get a bit circular. Sideliner is pleased to announce that The Leisure Review will be adding to the confusion by inaugurating our Puffed Up Professional of the Year Award which will go to the most self-absorbed, patronising sports development practitioner in these islands. Nominations on an email, please, to the editor via the usual address. Please be advised that entries cannot be returned and Jennie Price is excluded under the provisions of anti-competition legislation.

And in a fit of enthusiasm engendered by ITV covering a French Open tennis tournament with no Brit lasting much past the first day, Sidey has demanded the return of: “What have we learned from…?”

The Championship Play-Off Final: that teams at the top of the second flight of what we still endearingly call English football are quite capable of playing very badly indeed; that Kevin Phillips has balls of steel; that Crystal Palace will be on their way straight back down.

Twitter: that Judy Murray has a fondness for cakes, puddings, patisserie, chocolate, fancy biscuits, petits fours, desserts and buns, which belies her remarkable skinniness; that Lizzy Ammon, who writes on cricket for the Daily Mirror, is perceptive, witty and outspoken when she thinks only 11,373 people are listening; that Twitter, not procrastination, is the worst thief of time.

The parliamentary education committee: that Parliament TV is a better way to spend your morning off than watching Jeremy Kyle; that school teachers are pedantic and arrogant and united in an unwavering assumption that they are right; that MPs are worse; that people like Tanni Grey-Thompson who sit in on these explorations of the nation’s navel should bear in mind that we can see them checking their email, answering texts and generally not paying full attention; that anyone who invites Baroness TGT, Baroness Sue Campbell and Dame Tessa Jowell round for tea and then asks them dumb questions had best keep a tin hat handy; that the kids at a Cornish primary school whose headteacher’s misguided mantra that children have to learn how to lose will grow up less happy, less fulfilled and less likely to succeed because of her Govean idiocy.

Dylan Hartley: that rugby union is hanging on in there despite the best efforts of idiots like the Northampton hooker to derail it; that Hartley should be talking to Nike about sponsorship, given he shares the mentality of their marquee clients Woods and Armstrong; that whoever picks him, pays him and even makes him captain of their team needs to be thinking very seriously about their personal philosophy; that Richard Cockerill, for all his many faults, occasionally shows why he used to have friends beyond the Welford Road postcode, as he did when he suggested that had Hartley been calling Leicester hooker Tom Youngs a cheat he would have been right.

Sideliner