Chasing Paper

I once read a report of a chap who planned to go to a football match, but when he arrived at the ground, discovered that the programmes had all been sold, so instead of watching the game, he turned on his heel and went home. That tale may be apocryphal,  but on balance, I rather suspect that it is true: in fact, I would go as far as to say that it has possibly happened more than once.

Upon reaching the turnstile and finding that there were no programmes, our man went home - apparently.

The more sceptical among you may doubt that anyone would plan to go to an event - be it a football match, a play, or a concert - and not actually watch it because of the absence of a programme, brochure, or similar publication, but there are some football-goers for whom the 90 minutes of action on the pitch is but one part of the experience of going to a game. And I say football-goers rather than supporters because these are the chaps (and I would guess that most, if not all of them are men) who do not follow a particular team, but rather troll around the country (and overseas too, on occasion) taking in games and ticking off grounds. Frequently they visit and 'tick off' other places too, like pubs in The Good Beer Guide, or railway stations.

A selection of non-League programmes from eBay.

It has always been my belief that while women love to make lists (usually To Do lists, often with plenty of things for their men folk to do), men love to tick things off lists, and football provides ample opportunity for that. Apart from the Premier League and Football League clubs (ninety-two in total), there are almost 900 clubs playing non-League football down to Step 6 (that's six promotions below the Football League) at what one might call 'proper' football grounds (i.e. terracing, some cover, floodlights, bar and catering) who will normally also issue programmes. The 92 Club accepts as a member, anyone " who has already attended a first-team competitive fixture played at the current ground of each of the ninety-two clubs of the Premier League, Championship, League 1 and League 2 during those clubs' current period of membership of the League." There is no formal club for the other 891 clubs outside the top 92, but that does not mean that there are not people trying as hard as they can to visit all of them. There is, however, a handy website (https://www.footballgroundmap.com/) that allows you to log the grounds you have visited. According to that, I've been to 190 grounds, but given that the site lists 2,163 in England. Clearly, I have a long way to go. Thankfully I have little intention of even trying to get anywhere near all them  (or even a quarter of them), but I have no doubt that there are people desperate to work out how they can visit them all (before starting on another country).

I'll hold my hands up now and admit that when I go to a football match, I do like to get a programme: I might even be a bit disappointed if there was one printed but I could not get hold of a copy, but if a club doesn't issue one, then it isn't the end of the world. Out in my garage I have a number of boxes containing the programmes I have collected over the years. Sadly, during one of my many house moves during the mid-1990's when my life was somewhat turbulent, one box has gone missing. All of those that remain (bar some Romford FC programmes that are from the period before I started watching them) are from games I have actually attended: at one time I had a large number of programmes I had bought from dealers or football club shops, these were discarded many years ago. An exception is a programme from the 1949 FA Amateur Cup Final, the first ever played at Wembley Stadium, between Bromley FC and Romford FC, which I bought on eBay a year or so ago. It remains the most expensive programme I have ever bought (it was about £15), but obviously nowhere near as expensive as some you will find online or at auction - the most expensive, for the 1882 FA Cup final between Old Etonians and Blackburn Rovers, sold at auction for a world record £35,250. That clearly is an antique and has rarity value, however even recent, more mundane - and one would think, more common -programmes sell for decent prices.

For the football goer who must have a programme, there is now another piece of paper to chase; the teamsheet. Once found only in the press-box, teamsheets are now produced by clubs at much lower levels of the game than in days gone by: the affordability of printers and other computer equipment has made sure of that. So now it is not unusual to see a club official distributing teamsheets prior to a game, which on occasion provokes a rush to grab one from the assembled groundhoppers[1]. 

From The Non-League Paper, Diary of a Groundhopper regularly
demonstrates the importance of the match programme to such visitors.

These days, as programmes rarely feature team line-ups that are even vaguely accurate. At all levels of the game - not just in the Premier League - many now just list each clubs' squads,  and the days of the stadium announcer declaring, "United's team is as per your programme" are long, long gone. As a result, the teamsheet has started to assume greater importance, hence the frequent scramble to obtain one when they appear.

But the humble football programme may, just may, be on its last legs. The internet has supplanted it as the football fan's major source of information about his club, teamsheets provide a more accurate guide as to who is playing, and in any case, print deadlines mean that programmes can never be as up to date as the websites that all leagues and clubs now have. When I write an article for my club's programme it is not unusual for me to find that between my emailing it to our programme editor and the date of publication, whatever  I have written has been overtaken by events. Many clubs now offer their match programmes in digital format and the Evo-Stik South League no longer makes it compulsory for clubs to produce a physical programme, a digital one is deemed adequate and Uxbridge FC recently announced that they will trial issuing only an online programme this season.

The online programme has plenty of advantages: it won't sell out, won't get wet or crumpled in the rain, and collecting them won't take up vast tracts of your living space. The groundhopper who went to the ground only to find that all of the programmes had been sold could have downloaded one on his phone. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't have written the team changes and the score on it.

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[1] Groundhopper: Someone who visits as many grounds as possible, although there is more, much more, to it than that. Groundhoppers frequently construct complex rules that determine the circumstances under which a ground, or club can be ticked. This blog, http://onion-bag.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/definition-of-groundhopper.html goes some way toward explaining the phenomenon.

Any Colour You Like

Perhaps prompted by the reports that come 2040, Britain is to ban all new petrol and diesel cars, my daughter asked me last week if I would consider buying a hybrid, or an electric car in the near future. On balance, probably not, I replied, and the question may never need answering definitively since I will be into my eighties by the time the ban comes into force and for any number of reasons may no longer be driving anything.

The Toyota Prius, possibly the best-known hybrid on the market.

News of the UK's proposed ban comes hot on the heels of a similar announcement from the French government, and the decision by Volvo that all the cars they manufacture after 2019 will be entirely, or at least partially, battery-powered. The UK's move will also see the banning of hybrid vehicles, and so as with Henry Ford's remark in 1909 - that customers could have one of his Model-T's in any colour they liked, so long as it was black - come 2040, consumers will be able to buy any car they like, so long as it is electric, unless someone comes up with a viable alternative fuel source.[1]

Perhaps steampunk cars are the answer? Taken from repokar.com

The reasons for the proposed ban are clear and significant: air quality in UK cities, especially London, is so poor that it is thought to be responsible for at least 40,000 deaths every year.  Twelve-thousand people died in London in 1952 as a result of smog, resulting in the Clean Air Act of 1956, but whereas the so-called "Great Smog" was clear for all to see, the hazy conditions that are the only real outward sign of poor air quality today are easier to miss, but are having a marked and deleterious effect on our health. Obviously, something has to be done, and addressing pollution produced by cars with internal combustion engines is equally obviously a major part of the answer.

The Great Smog of 1952

But there is a whole raft of reasons why addressing the problem by banning cars needs a great deal more thought and consideration than I am prepared to give our legislators credit for. It is one thing to bring in laws to ban the sale of petrol driven vehicles, another thing entirely to comprehensively introduce such legislation without creating complete anarchy. Firstly, since the ban would be on new petrol and diesel vehicles only, the implication is that existing cars and vans on the roads in 2040 would not suddenly become illegal, but - although not currently stated - one imagines that existing vehicles would be given a deadline for scrapping, or at least incur punitive charges in terms of road tax and congestion charging. If not - and with current vehicles easily lasting twenty years or more - the proposed legislation could have little or no effect until 2060, or 2070 perhaps, unless other manufacturers follow Volvo's lead.

Then there is Fuel Duty, which for petrol and diesel currently amounts to 57.95 pence per litre and earns government the best part of £28billion per annum. No petrol or diesel vehicles means no Fuel Duty and a large chunk of government revenue lost, which would have to be recouped somewhere. Another means of fleecing the motorist - sorry, paying for the upkeep of the nation's roads - will need to be found.

Over half the price you pay at the pump is duty - and that is without VAT on top.

Driving or walking around my local neighbourhood, I have seen a few electric cars, but never seen one charging outside someone's property. And as the map below shows, public charging points in the area are thin on the ground. That is going to have to change if electric cars are to be a viable replacement for conventionally powered vehicles. And in our area - which I have no doubt is fairly typical - a very significant proportion of motorists park their cars at the road side, not in garages or on drives, so I remain curious as to how many of these motorists, who may have to park fifty yards or more from their front door, are going to charge their cars at home. Unless of course, there are public charging points every ten yards or so along the pavement.

Then there is the question of exactly where all the electricity needed to charge these cars is coming from? The National Grid, which has more than once in the recent past warned of potential power blackouts as demand outstrips supply, said recently that peak demand would increase by 50% if the country switches to electric vehicles. How will sufficient electricity be generated? There are suggestions that to cope with the increased demand for electricity, we would need to build ten nuclear power stations or erect 10,000 wind turbines. Given the controversy over the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station - not to mention the cost - I for one have absolutely no confidence that come 2040, the UK will be able to service all the electric vehicles that could be on our roads, either in terms of adequate supply or charging points. Unless we start now, building power stations at a rate hitherto unheard of, and covering the whole of the countryside with wind turbines and solar panels, in twenty-three years time there will be a whole load of cars that no one can drive because they cannot charge them up.

A designer's dream, never to be a reality?

Given that every new proposal, for every type of power station - be it nuclear, or coal fired, or wind farm - inevitably brings with it opposition from local residents and other pressure groups, and given that even once any objections have been overruled and planning approved, getting that installation contributing to the National Grid takes years, not weeks (Hinkley Point B came on stream in 1976, nine years after construction began), the announcement of the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles ought really to have come after an agreement to build the requisite number of power stations, generating the necessary amount of power, had been reached.

Then there are the batteries that power electric cars. At present, the maximum range you will get out of an electric car is about 280 miles, but for that you need to buy the Tesla Model S, priced at a minimum of £57,000 - out of the question for the average motorist. For a reasonably priced car - let's say under £20,000 - the best you can get is the Renault ZOE (in fact it is just about the only one you can get) with a range of just about one-hundred miles, although if you can stretch to £30,000, one of their higher-spec models will run to 250 miles. If governments and car manufacturers are serious about converting us all to electric cars, then their maximum range - and battery charging times - are factors to which a whole lot of serious consideration must be given.

The Renault ZOE has a range that won't even get you from London to Bristol on a single charge.

The demise of the internal combustion engine and our conversion to electric cars is probably inevitable, but setting a date and sitting back and doing nothing else is not enough. Government -both national and local - legislators, energy suppliers, and car manufacturers need to get together now to start planning for 2040. If they don't then I shall not be sorry if by that time I have given up driving; possibly I would have no choice anyway.

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[1] Alternatives to petrol and diesel include steam and compressed air - I like the steampunk notion of a steam powered car. See https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/features/eight-alternative-vehicle-fuels-to-petrol-and-diesel-you-never-knew-about/