Get real, Gaffer, and join us in the modern world

FOR all their cuttingedge pretensions, football managers are an old-fashioned bunch at heart. Take Garry Monk.

A few months ago he was a player at Swansea, but now fate has raised him high above those who once were his equals.

For Monk is a manager, with his own office, his own parking space, and a robust sense of his own importance.

Sadly, some former colleagues have been slow to recognise his elevation. And their unseemly familiarity has been noted. As Garry explains: “With me, at the end of last season it was “Monks” still, because I wasn’t official manager — I was “interim”, as they called it, and I didn’t have a problem with it. But I’m the manager now, so it’s “Boss” or “Gaffer”.

‘You’ll still get the occasions when someone forgets and says “Monks”. It’s something they’ve naturally called me for years. But as soon as the fines come in, it’ll stop.’

So here we are, in 2014, and grown men are required to address other grown men as ‘Boss’. Or, worse, ‘Gaffer’!

Who could use that forelock-tugging term with a straight face? Who could regard such grotesque deference as a justifiable perk of his position?

And when will the Professional Footballers’ Association address the 19th century approach to industrial relations by which Monk and his chums may levy fines on those who have displeased them?

In fairness to the fledgling manager, he may just have been joking. In any event, he probably hasn’t given the matter much thought.

Well, it is time he did, time that they all did. The modern game was born midway through Queen Victoria’s reign. The rest of the world has moved on since then, but football dropped anchor in the Edwardian era, and there it remains.

Garry Monk and all his fellow Gaffers seem to prefer it that way.