It isn’t athletics but it should be. Sky’s brand spanking new series of Monday Night Football returned to our screens last week and it didn’t half do it in style. Richard Keys and Andy Gray put the footballing world to rights with the very latest gadgets and gismos including – as we discovered this week – an indoor mini-pitch. “We don’t really need technology for this, do we?” pondered Keys of one incident. The usually perfectly sensible anchor was surely speaking somewhat ironically given that the whole premise of this ridiculous and unnecessary hour long build-up to the Monday Night match relies on pointless and malfunctioning technology. This week, the “boys downstairs” ran a Stoke non-goal through a computer that magically removed all the other players on the pitch clearly showing that the ball was over the line. “He [referee Chris Foy] will know in his heart of hearts that he should have got that right,” opined Gray of the incident lasting less than a second, having had the opportunity to look at it several million times from several million angles.
Elsewhere, the problem of penalties was thoroughly addressed. “Is the balance of power shifting towards keepers?” asked Keys, “Why?” snapped Gray. Err, because more are being saved than ever before. “Here we have a left footed goalkeeper,” puzzled Keys, “who chooses to dive to the left. Anything in that theory?” Five minutes, probably 30 researcher hours, several thousand pounds and a tired audience later, it was concluded that keepers may or may not be advantaged at the moment and amazingly there may just be something in Keynes’ theory. “So what I’m saying is,” said Gray in a light bulb moment, “if a keeper goes the right way, he has a chance of saving it.” Right, well that’s money well spent then. Afterwards, as if desperate to justify his £25,000 per week price tag, Gray revealed that he had “been thinking about penalties for a couple of weeks.” Uh oh! Sounds dangerous. Indeed it was: “I’m right handed, Richard, so I would go to my right….I’ve been talking to the lads in the office all day….and it’s noticeable that the keepers who are right handed went big right.” Ok fine, but what about Ben Foster? He’s left footed isn’t he? And yet he went right. “Yes, but is he right handed? I was left footed and right handed.” Phew.
Here comes the tenuous link! Wouldn’t it be great if the BBC invested in the same technology for their athletics coverage? Steve Cram and Brendan Foster could thrash out the complexities of the Bekele kick on a virtual track, Jonathon Edwards could thoroughly examine Philips Idowu’s take off having removed everything except his spike. Colin Jackson could play with the heights of the hurdles to debate whether if they were an inch taller, David Oliver would be as proficient. The possibilities are endless. Surely even Phil Jones could use it; a crowd-o-metre could measure “supporter impact” and then comparisons could be drawn with other crowds around the world. Inverdale could be seen hovering above the stadium, conducting things in his Godfather-like way, whilst Denise Lewis could….well, there are always going to be some flaws.
It surely won’t be long before grumblings emerge about the lack of technology in the Beeb’s coverage. The very least they should get is one of the snazzy new iPads that Keys has replaced his clip-board with, even if it was deemed “a bit heavy” last week. Watch this space.