Sports Books Blog

I’ve just heard about a great idea that doesn’t work. It’s called Google Base and it should be called (for me at least) Google Waste of Time. I spent half an hour navigating through this on-line “shop”, trying hard to put one book on to see if there was any response.

But the paranoid people from Google don’t like the name of our company. I realised too late that ’sportsbooks’ means betting in the US when I set up the company 12 years ago, and it seems Google Base don’t want betting on their service. Which is fine except that someone from Google ought to realise that while the US rules the world it doesn’t occupy all of it, just yet!

So, people from Google, ’sportsbooks’ doesn’t mean betting in Europe (or anywhere else except the US). Over here it means a company which publishes books on sport.

So Google start thinking international.

By the way, the UK (that’s England to most Americans) is that squiggly bit just above that other bit which is just over the water from Florida.

If this blog has any readers – and at times I feel I’m whistling into the wind – I must apologise to them. I haven’t written anything since just after the Frankfurt Bookfair. All I can do is say that this time of year is a publisher’s busiest. Frankfurt has to be followed up and Christmas prepared for.
For instance this week I met Christopher Hilton and Ian Cole, the authors of ‘Memories of George Best’, to discuss further publicity (and to talk about another Memories of… book) and then Mick Escott whose book ‘Addiction to Turnstiles’ we are publishing next year.
I always finish any conversation with Mick in a nostalgic mood. His book is about visiting 121 football grounds in England in 44 years. He misses the days when you peered out of a train window to spot the local football stadium.
These days the floodlight pylons rarely point into the sky. Indeed rarely are there pylons. Mostly floolights are perched on the roofs of stands.
It made me wonder if I shall ever feel the same about football as I did when I was younger. At school it consumed me. After school watching football matches became my job (and if you can think of a better one let me know) but my attitude to the game changed.
Thus when I gave up covering matches I still watched with an analytical mindset. So these days I watch football on TV (not the best medium; you can’t see the whole pitch). I haven’t been to a live match for ages.
When we moved to Cheltenham I did go to Whaddon Road a couple of times but the most exciting thing was the then manager Bobby Gould becoming more and more red faced with fury.
The problem is (and it’s a problem with most sports) that even at Cheltenham’s level the coach is king. And coaching is an essentially negative practice in football. It’s easier to tell players how to stop the other team playing than to encourage your own to be creative. I remember an Aston Villa player telling me more than 35 years ago that they spent 95 per cent of the time on defence in training and only five per cent on attack.
Go to second division matches these days (and remember that’s the old fourth division) and you will often see the away team playing with one striker and five midfield players. Yet – and I am aware I sound like a grumpy old man – what would happen if they came out with two wingers, a centre forward and a supporting attacker and gave it a go for ten minutes? I doubt we shall ever find out.