YOU WATCH Gillette Soccer Saturday with the 'wonderful' Jeff Stelling, right? So you must be a football fan, right? Wrong.
Real football fans do not spend their Saturday afternoon's glued to the TV listening to the inane chatter of Stelling and his motley crew. Real football fans are out watching a match, whether it be in the Premier League, Football League or, more importantly, at their local grass-roots club.
But Sky have produced a generation who rather like the idea of football just as long as it is beamed directly into their sitting rooms and they do not actually have to leave the house. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Armchair Fan...
So while the Premier League is thriving with billions invested in fancy new foreign players each year, earning the equivalent in one week that would keep a local club afloat for 10 years, grass-roots football is dying a slow and painful death.
Yet for the price of a Sky Sports subscription you could watch your local club six times a month and still have change for a pint and a bag of chips on the way home. So why are you all not doing that instead?
I recently had the misfortune of not being able to attend a match on a Saturday afternoon so I decided to turn on Sky Sports News (I get that channel free with my TV package) to watch the much heralded Stelling and co. And what an experience it was. I love a good bit of analysis and I have always been a sucker for an interesting stat or two but this lot took it to a new level.
Six hours it was on. Six hours!! Typical Sky overkill. And from 3 o'clock all you could hear were the constant screams in the background of Phil Thompson or Paul Merson. 'Oooh,' 'Arrh' they yelled like Wayne Rooney in an old people's home, while all we got to see was a blurry graphic of the crowd or Stelling's ugly mug.
It got me thinking; this programme is not made for football fans at all. It is made purely for the TV generation and gambling addicts. The same people that watch this nonsense will no doubt be watching X Factor and Big Brother afterwards. They probably never even leave their sofas at all on a Saturday.
Yet you speak to these people and they will tell you they are football fans. They will tell you how they have supported Manchester United or Liverpool all their life. 'I used to go all the time but I can't afford it now,' they will say.
Yet their local club, just two miles up the road, is crying out for their support. Sky claim to love football but you have to question that. They love people sitting indoors and watching football on TV, yes. But they do not actually love football. The crazy (peak viewing) kick off times tell you that.
But this coming Saturday is Non League Day so instead of watching the garbage that is Gillette Soccer Saturday, get yourself out and support your local club. Most are crying out for volunteers and would really appreciate your help and support. They will make you feel welcome and in return you will really feel part of the club.
I recently set up a small company with the aim of giving local, grass-roots football better coverage. At Butler Sports TV we film matches and produce highlights. We interview the players and managers. We make them feel as though they are on Sky. They love it and it makes them feel special.
Yet many of these clubs cannot afford our services. They can barely afford to clean the kit each week. So while Sky bore us with 15 hours of coverage from a drab 0-0 draw at Chelsea, the rest of us are missing out on the thrills and spills of a 6-6 draw at South Shields.
Come on, as a football fan what would you rather watch?
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