Only a game

'Keep calm and carry on'. That's what it says on my coffee mug. Advice from a more fraught era (although never actually used at the time), but words which we might be advised to dwell on in these days of unceasing thunder.

Football has once again been enveloped by controversy. Thierry Henry is this week's pantomime villain, his sinister act of handling the ball as a prelude to France's equaliser denying the Irish any chance of progressing to the World Cup finals (a job that was far from complete at the time); drawing opprobrium down upon himself from all quarters; reigniting the smouldering debate on the 'use of technology in the game' (as vague and nebulous a concept as there is); and providing the 24-hour news agenda an overspilling trough with which to gorge itself on.

These increasingly regular excuses to get all in a lather - be it due to Sir Alex Ferguson's offensiveness, David Ngog's or Eduardo's acrobatics, or, a bit further back, the injustices visited upon Chelsea in last season's Champions League - now have something of the pagan ritual about them. As Harry Pearson might put it: this looks set to be football's darkest week since the last one.

Of course, football in the 21st century is a high stakes game and the shining sword of truth must necessarily be wielded to lance the boils of corruption, bullying, cheating and diving that disfigure its once-beautiful aspect. Or have we actually got our perspective, and our priorities, quite wrong here?

We live in a world of opinion - so whether you view Henry as scum, Fifa as corrupt, Ireland as robbed, or football as debased, then fair enough. But maybe we should be concentrating our energies, prodigious as they are when it comes to comparatively trivial matters, elsewhere.

Granted, there's plenty to pick through, so let's try and cut to the quick. It seems clear that Henry committed an act of foul play; although I think the handball was instinctive - rather than a conscious attempt to cheat - he deliberately (in the sense that he was aware of the consequences) kept the ball in play. Would the use of replay technology have seen the goal chalked off? Certainly ... but then how would we utilise such methods without initiating a creeping and insidious disruption to the flow of the game?

The crux of the issue is that football does not have discrete passages of action, in the way that cricket, tennis, American football, or even rugby does. Fine, after William Gallas put the ball in the net, play had stopped. But what happens when the ball comes back off the crossbar and bounces on to the line, or is clawed away by the keeper? If it's in, then the break in play is justified. If not, how do you restart the game? A free-kick? A drop-ball? What if the defending team immediately broke and scored on the counterattack? Should the original decision be reviewed then, potentially rewriting the course of the game? Should play be called back, even if said defending team is in full flight, to test the case of whether a goal had been scored - and thereby denying them an attacking opportunity? What about penalty appeals, fouls in open play, off-the-ball incidents? Questions, questions, questions ...

Now that was a long paragraph. The most pertinent question, however, is this one: how long before the game of football becomes both unrecognisable and joyless? It is loved the world over because of its beautiful simplicity. Most of us start out playing with jumpers for goalposts - and even that comes with its controversies (the old dispute of whether the ball was inside or outside when it passed 'through' the post). But would we want it any other way? We don't (or shouldn't) participate for the outcome, but for the 'thing' itself.

This brings us to the morality of the issue. Does a sport have a moral obligation to the rest of us? To the fans, who've been let down? Can football's integrity be irreversibly damaged by the actions of its protagonists?

A proportion of the hue and cry has focused on Henry's failure to incriminate himself in the moments after the goal - to effectively make the case for it to be ruled out. Sure, I'd love to think that in the same situation I would put my hand up, so to speak, and explain my misdemeanour. But would I? In that white-hot instant, would my moral fibre be stiff enough? Would any of ours? It's all very well to huff and puff after the event, to take to the high ground and fulminate about those who have transgressed against us ... but it is an aspect of human nature that we almost invariably take what we're given.

Football had a muddy face long before now, and the rare and cherished exceptions, of Robbie Fowler or Andrey Arshavin for instance, effectively prove the rule. Should Henry be vilified as Maradona was? I can't see the incident ever being remembered in quite the same way. And how does it rank alongside Zidane's headbutt, Schumacher's forearm or, indeed, South Korea's 2002 World Cup campaign? Our heroes may be destined to let us down, but wouldn't we all prefer to be remembered for acts that highlighted the best of us, rather than the worst?

Football is still only a game, despite the distance it has come from its origins as the pastime of the working classes. Money and celebrity have distorted the lens through which we view the sport. Henry's act was no worse than the innumerable instances of petty dishonesty that pock-mark our day-to-day existence. We should of course try to eradicate these, but to do this we must focus on the quotidian, not the extraordinary; act with integrity ourselves, rather than pointing up the flaws in others.

At the same time, the question of setting an example to children is an interesting one. Surely, we all have to learn that, for want of a better expression, it's a hard-knock life? Sometimes bad things happen to good people. What is 'fair'? Moral and ethical values exist on a shifting scale. If we are to deal in absolutes, then every infringement ever committed in football is as bad as the one from last night; and if that were the case, the roars of indignation would be as unending as they are deafening.

No one got hurt, apart from maybe the commercial interests of the Irish team. Let's just simmer down, eh? If we all cared less about winning and more about the craic, then maybe we'd all enjoy ourselves more. And maybe if players didn't feel such pressure to succeed, whatever the means, then they wouldn't resort to sticking their hands where they shouldn't be, throwing themselves to the ground at the slightest touch and generally embarrassing us all. If such hysteria is one of the side effects of us all getting more bang for our buck, then I no longer want to pay the overpriced entry fee, thank you very much ...

Finally, the game should not be replayed. Ireland had a roughly 50-50 chance of progressing through a penalty shoot-out, but it should be remembered that they were not going to the World Cup at the moment Henry intervened. We might not ever consider the luck of the Irish in quite the same way again - but I'd wager they're big enough to take it.

Inevitably, the 'Hand of Henry' will take its place in the chronicles of controversy. But where would we be without our talking points, after all?

Player bulk represents a big problem

Man down ... again. The news that Danny Cipriani will miss England's autumn internationals is the latest in a series of injurious blows to team manager, Martin Johnson. Cipriani, albeit he was well down Johnson's pecking order, joins the likes of Riki Flutey, Toby Flood, Delon Armitage, Jordan Turner-Hall and his Wasps colleague Tom Rees on the sidelines ahead of what is shaping up to be yet another testing November for England.

The only remarkable aspect of the build-up for England's first Test against Australia is the absence of Jonny Wilkinson's name from the list of casualties. Rugby's bionic man, so oft-operated on has Wilkinson been in recent years, is thriving across the Channel with Toulon - but the painful legacy of professionalism in rugby union continues to claim less high-profile victims.

Those who play are usually big enough and ugly enough to accept that it is a contact sport to its battered and bruised bones, and that injuries are an inevitable part of the game. But have we gone too far down a reckless road? Cipriani's injury, described by his club as a "contusion" - a bruise to you and me - resulted in a hairline fracture of his fibula. That's some bruise. This comes just 18 months after the horrific fracture-dislocation of his right ankle; and the lad's still only 21.

The 21st-century professional rugby player is an imposing physical specimen - as the Powerade promo shots in this gallery demonstrate. Players are bigger and more muscular, and the gaps between them on the pitch have got that little bit smaller. This has led to more tackles and less tries, increased collisions and, essentially, more man sandwichs. And the guys who get munched may find their bruise has become a break, their shoulder strain a dislocation, their winding a lacerated kidney ...

With South Africa, the world's No1 team, utilising a pragmatic, power-based gameplan focused on kicking points at every opportunity (a blueprint first perfected by Clive Woodward's England), the spectacles of scrambled line-breaks, successful sidesteps and dazzling dashes for the whitewash have become scarcer - something most fans bemoan. But it could be worse: we're not the guys getting crunched week-in, week-out, after all.

Now this may seem like ambulance chasing after a spate of injuries in the England camp, and it is certainly difficult to come up with current figures on injury rates. However, a BBC study in 2005 - 10 years after rugby union became a professional sport - pointed to the huge rise in players being sent to the treatment room over the course of a season. I'm guessing that the graph has at best plateaued since then ... though with young players now coming through already chiselled into huge slabs of men (think James Haskell or Tendai 'Beast' Mtawarira), it could well have got worse.

What to do, though? Reduce the number of games?Allow players to wear more protective armour? Change the rules? Maybe the ELVs, aimed at producing more expansive rugby but effective only at increasing the amount of kicking and inconsistent refereeing, should have been designed with a different goal in mind.

The talk over the last month or so has centred on the Harlequins fake injury scandal (known predictably, and depressingly, as 'Bloodgate') but it is real casualties - such as the ones that plagued the Lions' summer trip to South Africa, and which have depleted England's resources for their autumn programme - that should vex the administrators in the long run. Whatever the solutions, the issue of player welfare is only likely to become more pertinent.

As an aside, this piece in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell, looks at the different but not unrelated problem of head injuries in NFL linebackers. Sobering, however you prefer your ball games ...

Farewell to all that ...

So, the big man has taken his final bow - though not without a flourish. In a way, victory at The Oval neatly summed up Andrew Flintoff's contribution to English cricket over the last decade: statistically unremarkable (29 runs from two innings; one wicket for 77 runs), but sprinkled with moments of irresistible genius (that Ponting run out).

I was hoping that whilst on a quest to win his second Ashes single-handed, Flintoff would manage to get his bowling average down below his batting average ... Alas, that wasn't to be (and perhaps inevitable, given the patched-up state of the man) and Statsguru at least will always remember him as an allrounder slightly outside the Botham-Khan-Dev bracket.

But Flintoff, certainly in the eyes of fans and team-mates, always seemed to transcend such workaday measurements of greatness; he was a man of 'moments', of enthusiasm, brio and showmanship. The crop bore a number of choice career cherries, and everyone has their Freddie favourites. From a blistering 84 from 60 balls against Pakistan as England chased 300 plus in an ODI for the first time in their history; to his maiden Ashes ton, adding 177 with Geraint Jones in 40 overs at Trent Bridge; to that down-on-one-knee stuff at Lord's. And who could forget 'Mind the windows, Tino'?

But that's the stuff of whistful reminiscence and grainy HD footage in years to come. Using the raw data of this statistical, chronological retrospective, I propose we do the Flintoff 'math' instead ...

• After 20 Test innings, spread over almost four years, Beefy's latest much-heralded successor was still to pass 50. Then something finally clicked, as Flintoff blasted 137 in an extraordinary Test against New Zealand in 2002 - following a run of three ducks in four innings, as well. The lad clearly didn't do things by halves.
• The following summer, Flintoff averaged above 50 in a series for the first time. His 423 runs at 52.87 against South Africa helped Michael Vaughan to elude a home defeat in his first series in charge. Even better, under Vaughan (Nasser Hussain resigned after the first Test), Flintoff averaged 54.71.
  
• Between March 2002 and August 2005, Fred scored five Test tons. The roughly four-year spells either side, contained none. Purple Freddie was exhilarating while he lasted, though.
• Flintoff took the new ball for the first time in India in 2001, claiming then best figures of four for 50 in the second Test. It was an early sign of his bowling proficiency outside of England (due to his back-of-a-length style); he averaged 29.69 on tour as opposed to 36.11 at home.
• Despite only taking three five-wicket hauls in his career, Flintoff was at his champion best bowling to the Aussies. Two of his five-fors came against the old enemy, and in total he claimed 50 Australian victims, more than against any other nation. His other five-for? West indies at Bridgetown.
  
• From 2002 onwards, when Andrew Flintoff really started to become England's Fred, his bowling was almost metronomically reliable, if not always devastating. Between then and his retirement, Flintoff only went wicketless in a match three times: twice at Edgebaston (against South Africa and Australia, in his penultimate Test) and at Perth in 2006.
  
• During those years as the attack's go-to bowler, between August 2004 and March 2006 Flintoff took a wicket every time he bowled - a run stretching across 37 innings.
• Flintoff achieved the allrounder's holy grail of a better batting than bowling average against three opponents: the relatively weak West Indians and New Zealand; and Australia. Again indicative of the man's capacity to seize the moments that mattered, Fred's 33.55 with the bat and 33.20 with the ball against the world's No1 side are indicative of how good his career stats could actually have been.

Anyway, that's enough numbers for now. The geek in me has been sated. But here's looking forward to the Stuart Broad version in a decade or so.

Fredheads

One man will be more important than any other to England's hopes of winning the decisive Oval Test, which starts tomorrow, and thereby regaining the Ashes - but it won't be the six foot four Lancastrian near-legend we call Fred.

Andrew Strauss has gone about his Ashes 2009 business with quiet efficiency, much as he has done since returning to the side against New Zealand in 2008 after being dropped due to poor form. He is England's highest run-getter by a clear hundred (344 @ 49) - as he was during the fight to save the series in the Caribbean (541 @ 68) over the winter - and he currently averages at least 10 more than any of his top six colleagues do against the Aussie attack.

That, coupled with a direct, pragmatic approach to the captaincy, means Strauss has emerged as the team's MVP - a status conferred as much by his approach and ability as the absence of a certain KP. He has also succeeded in defying the traditional affliction of batting like an England captain, ie. poorly - as this comparison of his averages with and without the extra responsbility shows (a handy link that will either add weight to or disprove the contention as time passes).

Strauss has thrived under pressure, leading by example and tackling the Australian menace head-on, albeit in his trademark undemonstrative manner. Contrast and compare with England's supposed titan, Andrew Flintoff, for a moment. Fred took the plaudits for his five-for at Lord's (when Australia made 400 in their second innings) ... but shouldn't, as Lawrence Booth points out in his Spin column, the MoM award really have gone to Strauss for his first-dig 161?

Not to say that Flintoff's presence in England's fifth-Test line up is insignificant. He appears as some kind of bogeyman in the tourists' psyche and his no-nonsense batting bolsters the lower-middle order a sight more than Steve Harmison's. But he bowls as part of an ensemble cast - with seven wickets at 49 he is fourth in the England standings - while Strauss is the team's standout batsman.

Australia must be bowled out twice on what is likely to be a batter's wicket, and Flintoff's fire will be as important as the hoped-for contributions from Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad et al. But England have also to score 'big runs' (and winning the toss wouldn't do any harm either). This is Strauss's department - and if he hits his straps again, he might just drag the rest of the team with him.

No pressure, Andrew ...

By any means necessary

It may seem superfluous to say it, but England needed to save the first Test in Cardiff. Psychologically it was important; in terms of remaining in the series, it was imperative. Australia's funk at perceived English time-wasting may well become a significant corollary - and Ricky Ponting did well to play the incident down.

Can England take 20 wickets in a match from here? The signs certainly weren't encouraging. And if you examine the form of England's bowlers against Australian opposition in the last seven years (encompassing three Ashes series), the question appears to echo that bit more ominously. What would you give for Simon Jones (19 wickets @ 21, strike rate of 34) to be fit right now?

Still, it is thanks to two bowlers, Jimmy and Monty, that we endure. To Lord's, lads, and let's make a fight of this one.

Something missing from the Arsenal?

After a lamentable Champions League exit to Manchester United, where, despite the momentum-sapping quality of United's early lead, a fightback never seemed likely to materialise, questions began to hover again over Arsene Wenger's brood.

Then the Emirates was sacked by Chelsea five days later. Whatever the progress made by the Arsenal youth project since November, when the title challenge foundered on the rocks of defeat to Fulham, Hull, Aston Villa, Stoke and Manchester City, the shortcomings of Wenger's squad were twice brutally exposed within the space of a week.

Arsenal is a subject I try to keep close to my heart but far from this blog. Partisanship doesn't often make for sober, cogent analysis ... but sometimes subjectivity can offer its own insight. As someone who welcomes the cosmopolitan mix of players brought to this country by the likes of Arsenal, I'm loath to light upon the hoary old 'foreigners don't care' argument; but after a classic post-defeat bout of soul-searching with my fellow Gooner brother, Ross, we'd settled on a hypothesis or two.

Maybe there is a case, chest-beating chauvinism aside, that a collection of largely foreign players don't 'want it' quite so much as ones who are wedded to the badge. This is perhaps symptomatic of the increasingly footballer-as-businessman nature of the game - but certainly Arsenal seem to lack a Rooney, a Gerrard, a Terry, who will always give their utmost for the cause.

Is this because they are English? Or because Cesc Fabregas isn't? Such a postulation would surely apply to various domestic leagues around the world, in that locally sourced players may well feel more than a casual affinity for their club. Arsenal undoubtedly have a squad of committed professionals, but does each individual view the arrangement as more of an employer-employee relationship than, say, Jamie Carragher does at Liverpool?

Arsenal rarely overwhelm teams as often as they did in their glorious late-90s, early 2000s heyday, when players of Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry's quality blended with the likes of Tony Adams, Ray Parlour and Sol Campbell. Does the current collection of elite graduates from the Gunners' global scouting network lack a heartbeat - or at least someone who understands the fans' chants, knows why they turn up evey week?

Perhaps, too, there is an excessive focus on cold technique within the Arsenal side, at the expense of passion and grab-the-game-by-its-scruff dynamism. Certainly Wenger has emphasised that aspect of the current team's play - perhaps influenced by criticisms of more robust, combative, possibly cynical, Arsenal line-ups of the past. There was a time when the aesthetes of north London were perceived as an indisciplined, bully-boy side, lest we forget.

Whatever the case, it is painful to see your side fail to raise its game in the cauldron of a must-win Champions League semi-final against one of the oldest of enemies. Easy answers there are none, and Wenger will doubtless tread his own path. But unless Jack Wilshere and Theo Walcott start stamping their personalities on the team soon, our doubts and questions will linger ...

Here comes the sun (which is often not a bad thing in a sporting context)

The warm murmurings of spring; the smell of cut grass on the breeze ... things that remind me of youthful trips to the fields over the back to play cricket on the concrete strip, or headers-and-volleys with rugby posts for a goal.

Normally I favour more pluvial conditions, the type that change the tenor of a late-autumn football match, or which make for muddled and muddied rugby. Such a preference is probably also influenced by a pallor more Ronald (McDonald) than Ronaldo, but there is one unequivocal bonus to seeing the sun parked high in the sky: cricket.

It has to be pleasure-in-chief of the summer months and, with the World Twenty20 and the Ashes among the few major sporting events on the 2009 calendar, there will be plenty of bat'n'ball to be enjoyed. There may be some scuffling along cricket's boundary rope - such as the continued debate about the respective merits of the Test and Twenty20 games - but that shouldn't overshadow another season of domestic and international contest; provided the weather holds, of course.

Yes, it's certainly one thing the sun is good for. Hat on, can/glass/hip flask in hand, some bins shielding the eyes as the players shimmer out in the heat. I have, of course, done my time sitting under cover while rain conquers the outfield - but a sport can't be blamed for the inconsistencies of the native seasons, can it?

There is, simply, an ineluctable beauty to a day spent watching two teams - or more precisely, two men - jousting out in the middle. And this is where I think the county game, and the championship in particular, holds its own. Away from the circus of England matches (which are of course fun, but for other reasons), and the inescapable marketing and consumerism that swamps so much of professional sport, the county championship hums along, a faithful and trustworthy friend. Like the libraries of academe, or meadows filled with nothing but cows and buttercups, there is something of the English idyll at play here, I think.

This is cricket, for me, pared down, perhaps not even that popular - but pure. With time to read the paper, or go for a wander in search of a pint, then to return to the duel at hand. Because that's what we're after, isn't it? Two fellows (along with sundry supporting players) taking to the wicket to try and get the better of each other with just a bat and a ball.

So I'll be taking advantage of the sunshine, whensoever it happens to grace this isle, to add to my list of county grounds visited and while away a few more hours taking idle pleasure from the summer game. Making sure to apply the sunscreen to myself, of course ... almost as often as applying myself to the ale.