Comedy exhibition games - on and off the field - only hurt the A-League

The ABC, given the opportunity to televise a football match between the A-League’s best team and one of England’s most decorated, decided for some reason to construct around the event a truly dreadful ‘comedy’ framework.

Three hosts appeared on our screens, clad in ill-fitting jerseys and scarves, already primed with strained smiles. A looming dread descended; this was going to be an ordeal. Things got off to a truly bilious start, as a few abhorrent seconds of Warwick Capper’s 1985 song I Only Take What’s Mine were shown.

God… why have you forsaken us so?

Here are some of the best lines from what was a truly testing opening segment.

“We’re expecting them [Sydney] to score a few goals and get smashed in the second half” insert canned laughter.

“Ninkovic could almost play in the Premier League couldn’t he?” – it was pointed out to the presenter that Ninkovic wasn’t playing tonight, as the viewers started shuddering.

“Shows how much I know!” he said, grinning at the camera; yes, or how atrociously little.

“He’s very affectionate [Jurgen Klopp], isn’t he? roll five second, black-and-white montage set to soppy music of Klopp embracing his players.

One of the panellists, when asked about Graham Arnold, prefaced her comments with “The coaches I know about are your AFL coaches”.

Then out came the ‘Arnold-ometer’, a prop-comedy gauge used to track Arnie’s many hilarious moods – what fun, eh? Perhaps the most blaring indignity was using an elderly Liverpudlian, apparently named Billy, as some sort of cliched stereotype sidekick, sitting in an armchair with a crocheted blanket draped over the back.

A few questions were thrown at him, his answers were quite clearly unrehearsed, and then he wasn’t seen again. There were literally too many appalling gags to list without succumbing to violent heaving. We haven’t even mentioned the bizarre, off-the-cuff telephone call to Arnie, which lasted a few excruciating minutes, a sequence that was essentially just one of the presenters shouting into his un-mic’d iPhone, as the others guffawed and gurned at the camera.

Oh yes, then they all texted Harry Kewell – recently made manager of Crawley Town, and no doubt busy – a series of side-splitting comic text messages, one of which was “Hey Harry, you called. Who is dis?”

It was all fantastically awful, a utterly stomach-turning effort at pre-match coverage.

(Dean Jones / Flickr)

This match was not one to take seriously, sure, with Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Steve MacManaman set to take to field at some point. This was a post-season exhibition run-out, a light caper. But it was still a football match, involving the country’s best team, which was, Ninkovic aside, basically a full strength starting XI.

More important this was an advertisement of sorts for football in Australia, and it was being framed as a kind of pantomime to laugh at. The A-League is growing out of it’s awkward adolescence and into a fine, handsome adulthood, and this ghastly coverage fixed a clown nose to it, and ruffled its hair like you would some pudgy step-child. It was embarrassing.

The commentary team made no attempt – thankfully, if in total inconsistency to the demeanour of the earlier coverage – to carry the air yucks and sniggers into the match-call. Steven Gerrard had a fine chance to volley in what would have been a thumping opening goal, but skied it, to the audible disappointment of much of the crowd.

Daniel Sturridge slid home the opening goal after seven minutes, drifting one way, then suddenly back the other way, bamboozling Alex Wilkinson, before shooting low and hard beyond Danny Vukovic. One of the commentators spoke, in somewhat irrelevant fashion, how it was evidence of Sturridge’s readiness to force his way back into England contention, and that Gareth Southgate was no doubt keeping an eye on things. Yes, and do you think he was scouting Carragher while he was at it?

The commentator garnished that remark, as replays of Sturridge’s sharp finish rolled, with the sentence “That’s the difference between the Premier League and other countries”, by which one assumes he meant our country. How tedious and boorish it is to point out that the A-League isn’t as good as the one of the oldest and most richly funded leagues in the world.

It crept up on you, as the crowd hopefully called out for Gerrard to shoot whenever he had the ball, and cheered all of Liverpool’s promising moments, that this was a Sydney crowd who weren’t supporting Sydney. The stands were bathed in red, a sea of Optus customers, it seemed – I’m sure all of them sat up to watch Liverpool’s final league match against Boro three days ago. When Alberto Moreno – called “Arthur” Moreno by the commentator – scored Liverpool’s second goal, there was much rejoicing. A little earlier, Carragher was seen keeping pace with George Blackwood.

What is the value of these events, really? They force football into some small recess of part of the public consciousness for a night, drag some dusty Premier League shirts from cupboards for a six-hour airing, but what else? Make a mockery of the local league? Expose the woeful under-preparedness of our public broadcaster? Prompt a deep void of mirth within every unfortunate viewer, as one quip after another deflates the soul?

(AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)

In last night’s match, even before the first kick Sydney were in a lose-lose situation. Win, and it is dismissed because Liverpool were playing literal retirees on the night. Lose, and it’s used as evidence of how poor the A-League still is, snickered at for being unable to hang with 80 per cent of Liverpool’s Champions League-worthy team.

All the people in the crowd, who had been lining up outside the Liverpool merchandise tent a few hours earlier, will not be converted into Sydney FC fans by this, an unfunny joke with our champion team as the punchline.

The referee generously waved away appeals for two Liverpool penalties as the first half wound down, and David Carney struck the woodwork. Roberto Firmino had scored a third by that time, and the atmosphere – described as “electric” by the call team – was flat.

The placidity of the half-time break was lacerated by the return of the pre-match team, and as soon as one of them described Moreno’s goal as “Harlem Globetrotter-esque” – if hackneyed ‘esque’ comparison must be made, please keep them within the sport in question, for Christ’s sake – the television was turned off.

An incredible FFA Cup 5-4 comeback win by South Melbourne against Dandenong City was being broadcast on Facebook, an absolute ripper of a game, and so I watched that instead, and I pitied all those who hadn’t switched over with me.

Arsenal will be playing Sydney FC and Western Sydney in July; if a repeat of this cavalcade of ignominy occurs, especially the torturous coverage, it will do nothing but hurt football in Australia.