Free to view or not to view? that is the question.

Lets face it, with the England Football team already qualified for the World Cup and very little else happening in the world of sport, this week has been a bit of a write off for Nickssportrant. Of course other nations were involved in meaningful World Cup qualification campaigns but when you don't hail from those countries its just difficult to get excited about a team that's not your own. Whilst I was sitting in the pub, watching the Irish worry a lacklustre Italian team, I wondered to myself why I was not watching England? It is not often that an England supporter can sit back, hands behind his or her head, and relax safe in the knowledge that he or she can celebrate whatever the outcome of a Qualification game may be.

Surely this is no way to build momentum before the World Cup. For the first time in a long long while this England team look dedicated to the cause and play with a real sense of purpose and drive. So what better way to eradicate the aura surrounding the team than to leave them stranded in the Ukraine with only a handful of hardcore fans able to watch via a dodgy Internet site or illegally streamed Turkish TV. Finally we have a team to be proud of and then the public isn't able to watch them play.

The Official England fan club was equally annoyed at the decision to only screen the match online and suggested that a rule should be made whereby the rights to International fixtures could only be sold to free to view television companies. There aren't really any true free to air channels any more. BBC has its license fee and sky and the rest of course all cost money. The issue is instead that rights to matches should not be allowed to be sold to Internet only channels. Firstly their picture quality is poor, secondly their coverage is poor, thirdly they restrict how many people can view the match in question. Only 1 million people were able to watch online (only 500 thousand did 200 thousand of whom were the armed forces who got it free) due to picture quality issues stemming from too many people using the live feed.

Maybe once Internet technology is up to scratch this will be the way forward in the future, but for now the FA should do more to insist that matches are screened on TV.

This is an isolated situation brought about by Setanta going bust, Football fans have little to worry about when it comes to watching the sport they love. Other sports though are really feeling the pinch of the recession and its effect on TV stations unwillingness to screen costly sporting events.

I am a great fan of boxing and am finding it increasingly difficult to watch all the fights I want to. The latest is Carl Froch's first fight in the 'Super 6 Boxing Tournament'. Froch will be fighting in front of 10,000 people on Saturday and yet the only place that will be showing the fight is little known and difficult to access satellite channel 'PrimeTime'. I'm sure that other sports must be suffering as well.

Sports fans must just hope that channels are saving their money for the World Cup next summer and that after this we can once again be spoiled with easily accessible and good to watch coverage of the sports we love. Channels also need to do a little more to support sports that could well become increasingly popular after the 2012 Olympics. Boxing is one of these. Surely a little investment now would pay off once the Olympics have come around.

Owen and Co out of Touch with Fans Reality

The Manchester derby at the weekend was a great spectacle. The blue side of Manchester riding on a wave of optimism and wealth seemed ready to begin the re balance of power within the city. With seconds remaining a former Liverpool hero scored the winning goal, thereby thwarting City's former United strikers Hughes and Tevez who now play for, and manage City respectively. Confused? These days if you were away over the summer transfer window you would be shocked at how the football landscape had shifted.

Players and clubs are busy doing business and the people being forgotten are the fans. The issue that needs attention here is whether we can blame the players and clubs for betraying their fans? For a fan the beautiful game can be part of their lives but for the most part it is not their entire life or career. For a player or club boss the opposite is true. Players in particular have given everything to get to the top of the game. For every one of them that makes it, to the six figures a week world of the premiership, there are hundreds more that don't. Can we really blame them then for trying to get as much out of the game as possible during their short and injury prone careers.

The man who provided the inspiration for this rant was Michael Owen. Having been a Liverpool hero, he was forgiven by fans for moving to Real Madrid, and was even understood when he moved to 'crazy spending' Newcastle. To move to Manchester United though, Liverpool's most loathed and hated enemies, has pushed Liverpool fans to disown a player that they once viewed as something of a legend. Owen has so much money that he didn't need to move to United, so what were his reasons for moving? First he wanted to make the world cup squad. Second he wanted a Premiership medal. He may well accomplish the latter but I still doubt that he will make the world cup squad.

Will a premiership medal earn't from the bench really cement Owen in footballing history. I don't think so. United fans have already had the best substitute in history in Solskjaer. Even if Owen does score a few big goals this season and win the league, United have won the league so many times that their fans will hardly remember Owens small contribution. This is the point that Owen has missed. What the fans think is what ultimately matters. It is they who will talk about the history of the game to their kids and their kids kids.

If Owen had gone to a smaller Premiership club for less money per week he could have become a hero in one season. If he had scored 20+ goals playing 90 minutes a week he may also have scraped into the World Cup squad and had the chance at obtaining true sporting immortality. By choosing United he has destroyed the legacy he fought so hard to create at Liverpool and he has also in my opinion hindered himself from creating a new legacy in the final years of his career.

Players need to realise that there comes a time when you have enough money and that what matters after that is what mark you as a player have left on the game. I do not blame young players for making big money moves. They don't know what lies ahead for them and need to make their money whilst they can. Experienced and already rich players however need to take a step back before signing big money contracts and look at whether what they are doing will secure their short term futures or (much better) their long term futures.

At the time of me writing this, one such example of a player ruining his legacy is that of Sol Campbell. A former England International and Premier League regular, Campbell shocked the footballing world when he moved to lowly Notts County on a £40,000 a week over 5 years contract. Just one week later and he has left the club. The reason for him leaving according to Notts County Chairman Peter Trembling is that he has "one eye on the 2010 World Cup Squad". Surely now that isn't a possibility for a man who clearly put money above his ambition to play for England. If he had moved to another premiership club the World Cup may well have been a possibility.

Who else losses out from this bad decision though? The fans at Notts County of course. A promise had been made to them and now its been broken in record time. To sum up; fans need to realise that the sport is a business now, and that players are professionals within that business, and therefore unsavoury transfers will be made. However players also need to spend more time considering their options. They must make sure they make the best move for themselves (which isn't always the best paid one) which in turn will usually be the best move for their long term future and their fans.

Ashes over reaction!

Let it be known that I am not a pessimist yet merely a realist. However I was made to bubble with pessimism whilst reading the praise that has been dished out in spades to the Ashes winning England team.

TMS (test match special) on radio 5 live were busy declaring that Stuart Broad is the next Freddie Flintoff. Paul Haywood in the Guardian was waxing lyrical about the greatness of Andrew Strauss's captaincy. Then to top it all off almost everyone jumped on the band wagon and said that if we beat South Africa over the winter then we will be the worlds number one test side!

In fact the only voice of reason that I could find amongst the rest was that of Angus Fraser in the Independent who was quoted as saying: "Had either England or Australia played like this against South Africa or India they would have been comprehensively beaten".

I completely agree with the former England pace man. At the end of the day both England and Australia are average sides.

So why is it then that everyone in the media has gone berserk following England's victory? The first reason is that the Ashes has become a franchise all of its own. Every company under the sun has cashed in on its popularity, as the ashes along with Wimbledon fill the void left by Premiership Football's summer break. When it comes to winter though with the Football season in full swing all those supposedly cricket mad companies will have totally forgotten that England are playing a test match in South Africa.

The second reason the media is cashing in now on this victory is they know it will be back to normal all too soon! I believe we have no chance of beating South Africa and I think we have even less of a chance of retaining the ashes in Australia. This is why:

1. We still don't have a recognised strike spinner. Sure Swann can turn it on a cow patch like the 4 day old pitch at the oval, and yes Monty can have his moments. Both are finger spinners though and on flat hard pitches in the sub continent they will get about as much spin as a melon shaped Frisbee.

2. We have no genuine pace. Bowlers like Anderson and Broad always look good in England because the ball swings. This therefore masks their downfalls in other departments, such as line and length, their ability to move the ball off the seam and pace.

3. Support. All of our players love being roared on by the England crowd but how many times have we seen those same players crumble abroad. Trescothick had a mental break down, Harmison goes dizzy if he leaves Durham, and lets face it the large majority of these middle class lads haven't even been sworn at before. So the Aussie welcome party that will await them will probably have them beat before they have even touched a ball.

To sum up and give comment on the examples of praise that I gave at the start of this rant. Broad has potential but to label him the next Flintoff is crazy, Andrew Strauss is no where near as astute a captain as Michael Vaughan and doesn't have the leadership skills that even Nasser Hussain had, and England are perhaps the second best team in the world BUT only in England. Anywhere else and we are decidedly average.