No substitute for sport

After a Sparkling summer there is the prospect of some intriguing sport in the autumn. First and foremost a Ryder Cup that promises to be of interest for both golfing and non-golfing reasons. Second, an Ashes series starts in November that may not be as one-sided as recent clashes. If Vaughan, Trescothick, Thorpe, Flintoff, Gough and Caddick all play to their potential, the result may even remain in doubt until Boxing Day. We will be able to go to bed on Christmas night in the best way possible, with radio commentary from Sydney for company. Third, the Flat racing season comes to a head with the Ascot Festival, the Arc and the Breeders' Cup.

In the last named, the magnificent Rock Of Gibraltar will be going for his eighth consecutive Group One victory. An event so significant that Manchester United have already applied for a postponement of their Premiership match scheduled for the same day on the spurious grounds that it falls between a couple of away matches in the Champions League. When The World's Biggest Club seek to avoid their commitments so a certain member of their staff can go to the races (that's what it looks like, anyway) perhaps a welcome change of priorities is in the air.

Certainly, football has little to offer to compete with the fare in the first paragraph. On the international front there is Slovakia v England and England v Macedonia. Perhaps there will be a friendly thrown in and we can revisit that least fascinating of topics - the use of substitutions in friendlies. Too many? Too few? Who gives a toss? It's not even a proper game and obsessing over how it is played out is as ridiculous as sending a theatre critic to comment at great length on an early rehearsal for a play scheduled to open in Lisbon in the summer of 2004.

On the domestic front, and in the absence of Roy Keane, the most eloquent comment has come from his main rival, Patrick Vieira. The season is five games old and Vieira is suffering from ennui. He is tired of the clamour and tumult. He needs a break from football. Who can blame him?

After the World Cup, more football. There is barely a pause before they are emoting again. There is no time for reflection or questioning. Another week means another five live games on the telly.

Football's omnipresence would be easier to bear if those who make money from the game displayed a little more grace and intelligence. For instance, last Wednesday at Hereford racecourse at 1.46pm a minute's silence was observed by humans and horses alike. Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that lost so many staff on 11 September last year, sponsored every race. Tony McCoy, who arranged the afternoon of solemn tribute with James Blackshaw, head of gilts in London, donated his afternoon's winnings to Cantor's relief fund. An auction raised a further £25,000 for the cause.

Compare and contrast with a minute's silence at 7.45pm on Tuesday 10 September 2002, at Highbury, which was well kept, and one at the same time at Watford, which wasn't.

Wrong time, wrong place. There was no reason for football to mark the occasion and it was even more senseless for them to do so 16 hours before everyone else. But the prevailing principle appears to be any excuse for a silence. Princess Margaret, the Queen Mum, Soham... The last named being the odd one out, in that Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were football fans and were last seen wearing replica shirts.

The first two and Tuesday's effort, however, remain inexplicable and autocratic. If someone wishes to mourn the passing of a member of the royal family they should be free to do so. But attempting to compel people so to do before a football match is absurd. One, grief must be felt, not produced to order, to have any meaning. Two, the build-up to a Premiership match is not the most appropriate venue for such expression.

None the less, football, crasser still and crasser, bulldozes ahead, imposing its values upon those who of their own free will wish to watch the game. There are echoes here of the easy, simplistic and reaffirming New Patriotism and St George flag-bearing that was evident during the World Cup. It is another instance of pressure being placed on people to believe something that they do not believe in order that those who do believe it can feel more comfortable in their belief.

It is a point expertly dealt with by Norman Mailer in a Sunday Times interview last weekend. As we join the anecdote Norman has, uncharacteristically, forgotten to give a 'young liberal lawyer' offering him a small American flag a piece of his mind. 'I was furious at myself afterwards for not saying, "You don't have to wave a flag to be a patriot," because what bothers me terribly is the kind of free-floating patriotism that's going on now in the United States. It is a measure of our free-floating anxiety... In America it's as if we're playing musical chairs, and don't get caught without a flag or you're out. Why do we need all this reaffirmation? We don't need compulsive, self-serving patriotism. It's odious. When you have a great country, it's your duty to be critical of it so it can become even greater. But culturally, emotionally, we are growing more loutish, arrogant and vain. We're not only losing a sense of the beauty of democracy, but also its peril.' Mailer goes on to contrast this with British patriotism which he believes to 'be better founded' not least because the British 'can revile it, tell dirty stories about it, give you dish on all the imperfects who are leading the country. But deep down, it's their country. Their patriotism is deep... A good British man has a certain sense of the complexity of life.'

Perhaps a test of the American brand of patriotism and various European attitudes will come at the Ryder Cup which is why it is, for non-sporting reasons, the most interesting sporting event remaining in the year. Come the end of September the Americans may be at war with Iraq. Britain may inevitably support them. The Spanish, Germans, Swedes and Danes are unlikely to do so. The last time the event was contested it was marred by 'loutish, arrogant and vain' patriotism. What will happen against such a backdrop?

Will the Americans confuse golf with war as they did at The War on the Shore at Kiawah Island the last time America attacked? Will the British support their military allies or their golfing partners? Will the Europeans, as Olazabal did at Brookline, provide the dignity and complexity?

Who knows? It's only sport. Nothing too much should be read into it. But it's sure as hell more intriguing than discussing at greater length than is entirely sane how many substitutes a manager should utilise in a friendly game of football.