Pre-season will not be financial tour de force
PREMIER LEAGUE clubs have put plans for pre-season tours on hold amid uncertainty over what the summer holds.
League bosses have yet to confirm a start date for next term and travel restrictions mean the usual moneyspinning foreign trips are likely to be off the agenda.
Clubs often sign up to multimillion pound deals to play pre-season friendlies in the United States, Asia or Australia, but the money comes in from tickets sold and “bums on seats” as much as TV contracts.
And with uncertainty about whether fans will be allowed in to the games, clubs are having to pull the plug as they either look to rearrange, forfeit deposits or try to stage a few domestic friendlies ahead of the new campaign. It would be yet another commercial blow for clubs already struggling because of the pandemic.
Many tours are tieups with global sponsors and part of deals with existing backers. Meanwhile, UEFA are publicly as bullish as ever over the Euros being held across 12 countries despite plenty of smoke signals about the tournament being moved. But the FA are not among those pushing the idea of a single host nation.
With so many commercial deals, ticketing, transport plans and logistics needed for the tournament, it would take a huge effort to reorganise at such late notice.
Rangers 5 Royal Antwerp 2
Rangers win 9-5 on aggregate
NATHAN PATTERSON repaid his manager and the fans with his first Rangers goal as Steven Gerrard’s team stormed into the Europa League last 16.
The Ibrox teenager found himself feeling the wrath of his manager and the Light Blues legions after being caught at an illegal house party with four team-mates earlier this month in breach of Covid-19 rules.
But he repaired some of that damage as he slotted home (above) just 16 seconds after climbing off the bench. Gerrard said: “It’s been quite a week for him. It could be the biggest learning curve of that boy’s career.
“He’s a fantastic kid and he comes from a lovely family. He needs to understand what the people at this club think of him and the opportunity he’s got. He’s got a big future. Learn form this and make sure it doesn’t happen again. I want to be someone who gives people a second chance.”
Patterson, 19, is still likely to be hit with an SFA ban but he will be free to fill in for injured skipper James Tavernier in the next round.
Alfredo Morelos put Rangers in front before Lior Refaelov equalised for 1-1 at half-time. Patterson quickly struck after the break and Ryan Kent made it 3-1. Didier Lamkel Ze brought Antwerp back into it but penalties from Borna Barisic and Cedric Itten saw Rangers home.
COMMENT
THE Hundred, T20s, ODIs, that 10-over stuff they play somewhere or other, tip and run, the French variety, the table time-passer with those steel dice-type thingamajigs.
The great game comes in plenty of shapes and sizes, but goodness knows what form THAT was.
Because it was certainly not Test cricket.
In an era when the IPL, Big Bash and now, possibly, The Hundred, hold financial sway, traditionalists are never slow to tell us how Test cricket remains the purest form of the sport.
Never slow to tell us it is the pinnacle, the true examination of a cricketer, the steak to everyone else’s burgers, the serious stuff to the hit ’n’ giggle.
Well, they were not so quick on their keyboards as the farce, albeit a briefly entertaining farce, unfolded on this, er, questionable Ahmedabad pitch.
Events in less than 48 hours out in India turned Test cricket, even temporarily, into a farce.
Remember, not long ago, those traditionalists getting all hot beneath their tightly-buttoned, well-starched collars when the idea of four-day Tests was mooted?
Blimey, what Channel Four would give for a four-day Test right now?
They could have squeezed an entire Test SERIES into five days on this Ahmedabad track and still had time for a couple of episodes of Frasier.
In most sports, but especially cricket, home advantage has always been there to be enjoyed and maximised.
But not to be abused. That is crossing the boundaries of sportsmanship.
And the last time I looked, cricket was still holding on to a vague Corinthian idea that it is some sort of last bastion of sportsmanship.
Making things inhospitable and unsuitable for the visiting opposition is an integral part of sport.
But while a football club might grow its grass a centimetre or two longer for Manchester City’s visit, they won’t pour hot tar all over it.
They might run cold water through the showers but they won’t electrocute them.
If this had been a county game, the pitch inspector would have been drawing a chalk line around the scene of the crime before dusk.
Yes, England’s shortcomings and selection policies more than played a part in the laughable calamity. There is no hiding that.
But let’s face it, this pitch was not prepared to favour the home side, this pitch was doctored to favour the home side.
And that is simply NOT Test cricket.