| Wednesday, November 21, 2001 |
 | It's not all that often you get to call Vaughan ignorant, which means, as much as anything else, that you should enjoy it while you can.
Football. First up, of course, "do I not like x" means "I do not like x, not "I really do like x. Bit of an obvious one, but there we go.
Second up, his feelings on the proposed PFA strike action are wildly ill-informed. The players are not striking for more money to be "shovelled into the high interest accounts of Premier League footballers ". They are being balloted by their union on whether to take strike action in support of that union's claim for a particular percentage of television revenue received by the Football Association in exchange for the rights to display images of the PFA's members, over and above the subs that each player pays to their union.
Moneys received by the PFA are used in particular to provide pensions for lower-paid workers in a profession where the average retirement age is 35, and in providing financial assistance for players who missed out on the big pay packets, for example Tommy Smith, who played in the 70s and has subsequently required extensive surgery to retain mobility.
There's a story, told in a fascinating set of transcripts of Pat Nevin (of the NME, Chelsea, Everton, Tranmere Rovers, Motherwell and Scotland) on the psychiatrist's couch, of Charlie Nicholas of Arsenal being buttonholed outside a nightclub in the early eighties by a supporter who claimed that his performances were so poor on the pitch that he, the supporter, was confident that he could do anything Nicholas could.
"You can't do this," replied "Champagne Charlie", producing a fifty-pound note and tearing it into pieces before dropping it on the ground. Typical charmless overpaid football boor. Except that once the fan had departed he picked up the bits and taped them back together. Huge wages even at the very highest level in British football are a comparatively recent phenomenon.
The players who do earn tens of thousands of pounds a week will never need the PFA to support them financially. They will never need the PFA to provide them with legal assistance, or careers advice when a bad tackle ends their career at 25. And yet they are prepared to risk the wrath of their managers and paymasters - and thus financial penalties - in order to support the right of the PFA to have the resources it feels are necessary to take care of players without the big wages.
On the bright side, this unfortunate misapprehension of the structure of labour relations does provide a handy basis for the question of the day. Are you a male member of the middle classes who hates football? If so, is this because of or unconnected to the fact that you were tormented mercilessly for being shit at it in school? Tell me.
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