World Cup has broken daytime TV taboo

Martin Hesp on Saturday Read Martin’s column every week in the Western Daily Press

DAYTIME TV? Not for me. Too much to do. But there’s the little matter of the World Cup and, if you’re only half interested in football, it can become addictive.

Before the competition began I, like millions of others, felt deep suspicion and unease over Fifa’s decision to hold the tournament in such a diminutive desert country with less than half the population of London. A place with absolutely no historical connection to the game of football and no stadiums. The media buildup around the World Cup didn’t make things any better – the working conditions of the low-paid migrants brought in to build the stadiums, the many other human rights issues… It all seemed to add up to a big turn-off to what many of us regard as the world’s greatest sporting tournament.

“I’ll just watch the England matches,” I said to my wife. “And I’ll keep an eye on Wales as well – because their home stadium is the nearest national venue to the place where we live.”

“What’s Cardiff Millennium Stadium got to do with it?” she shrugged. “They’re not playing there in this World Cup…”

Fair point. I had to explain that we country folk support football clubs for all manner of strange reasons – none of which includes the very obvious one that the side in question represents our own home town. That’s easy to do in places like the North of England where communities the size of Taunton have Championship or even Premiership clubs, but the Burnleys and the Blackburns are far and few between west of Bristol. If local loyalty was all there was to it, everyone across a huge swathe of the South West would support Yeovil, but they don’t.

In a one-man bid to address geographic localism during this World Cup I am supporting England because I’m English, and Wales because, if I climb to the top of the hill above our cottage, I can see the Welsh coast on the other side of the Bristol Channel and, with binoculars, actually make out the upper stanchions of the Millennium Stadium 24 miles to the north-east. Someone told me that if you stand on our local seafront (Blue Anchor) when either the Welsh football or rugby sides are playing at home, you can actually hear the roar of the crowd. The distance is exactly 23 miles so I don’t know what my friend heard, but I doubt even the Welsh could make Land of My Fathers resound that far.

It is 3,369 miles from my front door to Doha, nevertheless I can hear and see the crowds chanting with great clarity on my TV thanks to the amazing 4G internet that is now beamed to many rural areas in the South West which didn’t have good broadband before. It’s fast enough to support high definition pictures which, speaking as a man who was accustomed to a snail-paced service crawling up two miles of copper wire, is nothing but a miracle.

Which makes it even more tempting to watch daytime TV. But only during a World Cup. I wonder why it is people like me feel so incredibly reluctant to watch television in the daytime? I can listen to hours of radio without a qualm – but you can do a great many other things while listening to something which requires only the use of one ear. TV soaks up everything you’ve got. It is made for that health-reducing pastime known as sofa-surfing. It is the religion of the couch potato.

Those of us who had a “Victorian work ethic” pummelled into us cannot abide the idea of either of those two things. Or rather, we can if we’ve put in a good day’s work or we’ve achieved a great deal on any particular day – but for us the idea of being horizontal in front of a screen before nightfall is anathema.

Having said that, I have watched a couple of daytime matches this week. Indeed, the moment I finish writing this I’ll be watching Wales v Iran. At which point some readers might ask why I’m not boycotting the whole thing altogether because of Qatar’s poor human rights record, etc.

I suppose a headline that read: “Countless millions across the planet boycott World Cup on TV” would shake decision-makers in Qatar and Fifa to the core, but you’ve got to be realistic: that is never going to happen.

It’s on. The ball is in motion. The coverage has given rise to a lot of awkward questions and criticisms which Qatari (and Fifa) leaders need to address if they are to regain any kind of universal respect.

And the tournament in Qatar has suddenly warmed up nicely from a sporting perspective. Major upsets, like Germany losing to Japan, go a long way towards increasing the popularity of any competition. Then, of course, there was England’s emphatic win on Monday.

Obviously I don’t know the result of our game against the USA because I’ve had to write this long before the printing presses roll – I can only hope I haven’t tempted providence by talking about the popularity of major upsets. But like a great many of you, I will have been watching – and will now carry on doing so, no matter how far the sun is from the yard-arm.