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Andy Brassell looks at a confusing and controversial TV deal for the Conference

It normally takes comedians or cover bands to pack out the bars at AFC Wimbledon and Kingstonian’s Kingsmeadow stadium on a night without a home game. But on a cold Friday evening in January, a few hundred were crammed in to watch live football. Wimbledon were playing at Gateshead and such is the relative obscurity of Premier Sports, the TV rights holder for the Football Conference from this season, that fans squeezed into the hostelries behind KM’s main stand to watch the transmission.

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Neil White worries that those at the top of the Scottish game have got their priorities all wrong

Such is the Scottish Premier League’s expertise in debacle, you have to respect the fact that their current blind stumble towards some kind of undefined “change” has lowered the organisation’s stock among its customers still further.

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The British press has widely turned on Andy Gray and Richard Keys for the sexist “banter” which now sees them out of their jobs at Sky Sports

Following the leak of videos that showed some archaic opinions being expressed in the Sky Sports studio, Richard Keys may have hoped that a generous sprinkling one of the most overused buzzwords of recent times would aid his acquittal. In a now notorious interview with Talk Sport, Keys claimed to have “enjoyed some banter together” with assistant referee Sian Massey, apologised for his “prehistoric banter” and, using attack as the best form of defence, pointed out that one of his most vocal critics Rio Ferdinand was guilty of similar “dressing room banter”.

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The Conference has recently received a Premier League windfall. Andy Brassell is not alone in asking how, and why

If you thought the Premier League was an insular, money-hoarding microworld of its own, think again. Maybe. Even at its most altruistic The Best League In The World can’t catch a break from some cynics, though their powerbrokers surely can’t be surprised that their relatively recent interest in the Conference is raising a suspicious eyebrow or two. 

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Ian Plenderleith uses websites like YouTube to discover a metaphorical gold mine of bad punditry from around the world

Who is the game’s worst broadcaster? The debate has embraced a wider cast of dubious characters now that we can head to YouTube to hear the gibbering vacuity and perverse analysis of commentators and pundits from around the world. And, thanks to the internet, British viewers were well warned ahead of the arrival on their screens this year of the lead candidate for football’s most nonsensical TV goon, ESPN’s diminutive, smooth-topped Irish export, Tommy Smyth.

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