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Some years ago this page printed a very unkind review of a new football “satire” website called Sports Offensive , which responded by publishing an admittedly pertinent parody of the author’s regular online column. Since then, and having added the sub-heading “Big Games – Big Lies”, the site has gone from mindless crudity to witty burlesque, inspired in the main by both the hyperbole and inanity of mainstream sports journalism. Its news stories stick to the first rule of satire – keep it brief so you don’t labour the joke. Most of them work to varying degrees, even if the headlines alone are sometimes enough to tell the story, such as Rooney dumps folks. The dig at the new Tottenham manager’s limited linguistic ability hits home in the first line with, “Jacques Santini today issued this deafening war cry to his White Hart Lane troops: ‘Hello my name is Jacques. I am fifty three years old and I live in London’.”
Particular praise must go to both the cartoon strip “Colly’s Boots” and “The Terry Farrell column”, a wonderful work that highlights all the fulminating righteousness and sycophantic hypocrisy of the worst British sports hacks. Under the headline FA filth makes me ill!, Farrell pre-supposes with a sense of excited condemnation what it is that Sven-Göran Eriksson has been getting up to in his office: “In and out he went, his rimless glasses slowly misting up as he emotionlessly hammered away, in, out, in, out with increasingly deliberate jabbing strokes like some sort of grotesque Swedish sewing machine.” From WSC 212 October 2004. What was happening this month Comments (0)
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