I might sound like Victor Meldrew but I can’t believe it! The shameful decisions to end FA Cup replays and the exclusion by the ECB of Sussex Women from the top tier of English cricket

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 24th April 2024)

I’m told that I am rapidly turning into Victor Meldrew, grumbling and complaining at the smallest incident that annoys me. On Saturday, I was unable to find the stream for a rugby game from Cape Town that I had been looking forward to watching. Apparently, according to my wife and daughter, I kept muttering: “I don’t believe it”. The daughter’s boyfriend even called me Victor, thus making us two peas in a pod. I finally found the stream on BBC Wales but the commentary was in Welsh. My mood wasn’t helped by my beloved Stormers being beaten by the Ospreys from Cardiff.

In mainstream sport, there have been two decisions taken in recent weeks that have put me in Victoria-Meldrew-on-steroids mode. These decisions demonstrate that both football and cricket are run for the benefit of elite clubs rather than for all.

In football, the Football Association and the Premier League have decided that no longer will there be replays in the FA Cup.  There was no consultation with Football League, National League or grassroots clubs for whom the competition represents not only their best opportunity to create life-long memories for supporters but also a hugely important source of income. FA Council members were not consulted about the changes.  The decision, and the way it was taken, demonstrate a total lack of respect for the football pyramid and its fans. Football belongs to all of us and decisions should not be taken in back room deals in which only the very wealthiest clubs are allowed to participate.

Those behind this decision are the clubs that compete regularly in European football competitions. They complain that there are too many fixtures and, for them, the FA Cup is a minor irritation, especially in the early rounds when they run the risk of slumming it with the likes of Yeovil Town, Crawley and Stoke City. After all , what sums up the FA Cup better than a replay on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke?  Even worse, the foreign-owned clubs might get drawn away against a non-League side. My fantasy fixture would be either of the Manchester teams, City or United, being drawn away at The Dripping Pan to face the Mighty Rooks, Lewes FC. A replay could mean that their pristine grounds being contaminated by teams from the lower leagues and, worse still, plebs like me who support the likes of Lewes.

In cricket, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) confirmed last week the eight First Class Counties who have been successful in their bid to be awarded Tier 1 women’s team status from 2025: Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey, and Warwickshire. Joining them, by 2027, will be Glamorgan and Yorkshire, who have been named as the first two Tier 1 expansion teams. Sussex and Kent, who have done so much to nurture women’s cricket in this country, have been excluded. As longstanding Sussex supporter Steve Hanson said, “Sussex were the forerunners for women’s cricket” and that “we staged matches when no-one was interested and now they don’t want us.”

The decision on who to include was not taken on cricketing performance. Had this been so, Sussex, led so well by Georgia Adams, would have definitely been included. They have won the Women’s County Championship six times since 2003 (twice as many championships than the Sussex men have ever achieved), and have won the Women’s Twenty20 Cup twice in the 15 years of that competition. Last year, playing as the Sussex Vipers, coached by the former England captain Charlotte Edwards, they won the Rachel Heyhoe Flint Trophy and retained the Charlotte Edwards Cup.

The ECB has announced that First Class Counties like Sussex, who were not awarded Tier 1 status, will now be involved in a process to determine the composition of Tier 2 and Tier 3 which will also involve National Counties (i.e. not First Class Counties) in the new-look women’s domestic competition structure.  But what is as egregious as the decision to exclude the likes of Sussex and Kent, is the decision that for the duration of the 2025-2028 seasons all three tiers will be ‘closed’, with no promotion or relegation.  How ridiculous and how protectionist it is that the favoured few will be guaranteed a spot in the elite Tier 1, no matter how poor their cricket and how deserving the winners of Tier 2 might be.

Clearly merit is not something the ECB cares about, and women’s cricket will be the poorer for this shameful decision.

Football is gambling with lives and it must stop

(This item first appeared in my ‘Brighton and Beyond’ column in the Brighton Argus on 8th June 2022)

When I was about eleven or twelve, while travelling home from school one Friday evening, I came across the ‘shell game’ for the first time. The shell game is an old conjuring trick where a pea is hidden under one of three identical shells, and they are then shuffled by the operator in plain view of the audience who have to guess which shell the pea is under. It can also be played with balls and cups.

On that Friday evening in central Cape Town, rather than shells, it was bottle tops. And it was not a magician entertaining.  It was a gang of conmen. The ringleader ‘allowed’ his accomplices to win a few rounds more than they lost, ‘winning’ for themselves a reasonable return.

What followed has haunted me for over 50 years. A labourer from the nearby docks, having just received his weekly wage, was on his way back to his hostel. He would have been a migrant worker, forced by the apartheid regime to leave his family hundreds of miles away, to work for 50 weeks at a time, often on the gold mines of the Transvaal or, in this instance, the docks in Cape Town.

Within five minutes he had been cleaned out by the gang. He didn’t stand a chance as he was conned out of his meagre wages. Once his last Rand was gone, he pleaded, in tears, with the ringleader to return some of the money as he had nothing to send home to his family. The conman just laughed in his face and disappeared into the curious crowd that had gathered, leaving the victim, a grown man in his thirties, sobbing on the pavement, totally humiliated, broken and broke.

Since that day the idea of losing one’s money through gambling has made me feel sick in the pit of my stomach. I suppose I react like that because I am attracted by, and could have been susceptible to, the false seduction of a quick win. I do buy a lottery ticket most weeks and, like many others, I fantasised about what I would have done had I won the recent £186 million on the EuroMillions.

Gambling is a major cancer in our society, destroying lives, breaking families and impoverishing communities. 

A recent YouGov survey said that 1.4 million people in Britain are being harmed by gambling with a further 1.5 million at risk. Gambling advertising is in your face just about everywhere, not least in sport.

Half of all Premier League football teams have gambling companies advertised on their shirts. Meanwhile, the English Football League, the Championship and Divisions 1 and 2, are sponsored by Sky Bet, benefiting the clubs by £40m a year. Just about all sport on television is accompanied by saturation advertisements for gambling companies.

With my brother, Simon, his son-in-law, Nellis Myburgh, and grandson, Daniel Myburgh, at Newlands Cricket Ground, wearing our Stoke City shirts with their gambling adverts

The two football teams I support have contrasting relationships with the gambling industry. Stoke City, who I have supported all my life and who currently play in the Championship, is not only sponsored by a gambling company, but the company owns a majority stake in the club. The Chairman of Stoke City is a director of that company while his daughter is its founder, majority shareholder and joint chief executive. In October 2019, Forbes magazine estimated her net worth at $12.2 billion.  In 2020, she received a salary of £422 million with dividends of a further £48 million.

There certainly are a few winners from gambling.

Lewes Football Club, on the other hand, has led calls to “kick gambling advertising out of football.”  It points out that 450,000 11 to 16-year-olds gamble and that at least 55,000 are already addicted. It has refused gambling sponsorship money and, in 2019, was the first football club to sign up to ‘Gambling with Lives’, a pioneering gambling education programme. ‘Gambling with Lives’ was set up by families bereaved by gambling-related suicide and points out that “every day someone takes their life in the UK because of gambling.”

The Lewes FC men’s shirt with its ‘Gambling with Lives’ logo

The club put the ‘Gambling with Lives’ logo on the front of their men’s first team shirt as a statement against the saturation of gambling sponsorship in the game.

As part of the programme, the men’s first-team goalkeeper, Lewis Carey, shared his own experience of gambling harm. He became addicted to gambling as an 18-year-old shortly after signing his first professional contract.  He said that it took a severe toll on his mental, physical and financial wellbeing for several years.

The government is reviewing the Gambling Act 2005 to ensure gambling regulation is fit for the digital age. Banning advertising on football shirts is one measure it is considering.  My message to government is: “Just do it”.

For more information about ‘Gambling with Lives’ see their website http://www.gamblingwithlives.org