Wonderful Thing Technology

RESEARCH for a book I'm currently writing has seen me, this week, trawling through a film archive. It's great fun, viewing footage, mostly in black and white, of long-ago games. In the course of my researches, I have gone off-track once or twice to have a look at iconic matches, which don't really fit in with the on-going work.

Yesterday, I chanced upon footage of the England 3 Hungary 6 match in 1953 and found myself chuckling quietly. This was a highlights package, an English edit - which made it seem that the Hungarians, instead of playing England off the park, had been lucky to win by three breakaways.

I was once given, as a present, a two-part "History of Scottish Football" video. The footage of the 1967 Wembley match was, like the Hungarian footage, an English edit - looking at it: boy were we lucky to win that one.

Match coverage rights are now big business; for example, Sky has the rights to home Scotland internationals, so, if you cannot get to Hampden, haven't got Sky, or cannot be bothered going down to the nearest pub which is showing the game, you're ever so grateful for the BBC Scotland highlights show at night. Trouble is, this can give you a somewhat distorted view of the game and with today's spread of internet forums and chat rooms - received wisdom can in actual fact be fairly stupid, if what's posted on-line is based on watching edited highlights, rather than the entire game.

Football is now more widely publicised than ever before. When I was a boy, you got the FA or the Scottish Cup Final, most but not every Scotland v England game and the very occasional important World Cup tie - for everything else, you had to actually go to the game.

Gradually, however, as Sports Report switched from radio to television and Scotsport began, edited highlights were shown, which helped spread football's appeal. This, by the way was not such good news for football reporters who actually writer their reports.

In the days before TV, the big name writers of the day - the likes of 'Waverley' in the Daily Record or RE "Rex" Kingsley in the Sunday Mail had a bit of poetic licence when it came to describing goals or a match in general.

Today, if you tried to embellish your goal description as these past-masters and their peers were able to, you'd be laughed at, since the goal had been seen from 15 different angles, in real time, solw-motion and stop-action; it had also been thoroughtly analysed by a former professional -you now have to tell it like it is, or else.

That's not such a bad thing: we are always told as we get into the journalism game, that facts are sacred, comment is free. Trouble is today I more often than not feel it's a case of not letting the facts get in the way of a good line, and don't comment - less you offend someone in football.

Today, the gospel according to St Rupert of Wapping is: Verily, the English Premier League is the greatest show on earth, everything else is inferior and thou shalt not point out that most of the Premiership games are crap.

Furthermore, I say unto thee, the SPL is mince and not to be mentioned in the same breath as the English league.

Aye, the SPL is mince, but it's guid Scotch mince, which is just as tasty and not nearly as over-priced as the English variety.

I sometimes long for the good old days, and no wonder.

Another meander down a side track yesterday had me watching edited highlights of the 1961 England v Scotland match, the 93- game. Received wisdom has it that that heavy defeat was all Frank Haffey's fault. Now the package I watched wasn't the best, too many cut-aways to the crowd at vital moments and with the goals limited by and large to the final pass and shot. But, from what I saw big Frank can only really be blamed for two of the nine goals he conceded. So the big man has for nearly 50 years carried the can for the deficiencies of the 10 in blue in front of him.

OK, it's nice to hide behind Bobby Shearer's famous excuse: "The English cheated, they used an orange ball, (Eric) Caldow and I wouldn't kick it and Frank and Billy McNeill refused to go near it", it helps us laugh, which stops us crying - but, time perhaps for history to be revised.