If football becomes too corporate, empty seats will become the norm
Channel: Football Live Football Live
Date: 2016-12-27

To those who complain there is too much football at this time of year, they might like to know there was a time – up until 1959 in England, as late as 1971 in Scotland – when League teams played on Christmas Day, not just Boxing Day.

That being said, even I, placed towards the fanatic end of the soccer spectrum, can see why those closer to the loathing end feel the football glut is somewhat overflowing. Last Saturday, with Burnley's game at Spurs moved to the Sunday, I found myself at a loose end in the late afternoon and so lay on the sofa channel-hopping. This presented a choice of English, Scottish, Spanish, Italian, French and German league games, but I found that none held my attention for long. Once Manchester United scored a second goal at West Bromwich, I did one last hop around Europe, switched off, and read a book.

As the TV football supply has expanded, it seems my own demand has diminished. The one absolute constant in my viewing habits, however, is an addictive desire to watch my own team, no matter the cost or logistical nightmare. So on Boxing Day, whatever the weather, with trains not running, I will be driving from London for Burnley's match against Middlesbrough. Not a glamour tie, you might say, but for me the only one in the world really worth seeing that day.

So...is it football I love? Or just Burnley? Of course without the one I couldn't have the other. Without football, there is no Burnley FC, whereas it is only for Burnley diehards that the inverse is true.

Then a random Christmas quiz question thrown at me – which two Football League clubs have never moved ground? – fuelled my thinking in this direction. The answer, it seems, is Burnley and Preston North End (assuming you can trust pub quizzes). Burnley fans can add our inclusion in this very short list to the very long list of things that make us all 'proud to be a Claret'. So I can't imagine football without Burnley. And I can't imagine Burnley's home being anywhere but Turf Moor.

The stadium has changed of course. Indeed all four sides have been demolished and rebuilt since I first went to a Burnley game 55 years ago. But Turf Moor is still home, the pitch still goes in the same direction, and the centrality of the football club to the town and the community is as vital, and visible, as ever.

I thought a lot about our and PNE's great act of endurance during our two pre-Christmas games in London, at West Ham and Spurs. At the first, despite a London Stadium crowd far bigger than they used to house at Upton Park, the atmosphere hovered somewhere between flat and dead, and made me think I must have been hallucinating when I so enjoyed the Olympics in the same venue four years ago.

For both games I gave up my usual preferred away end berth to co-commentate for Burnley's Clarets Player service on the club website. Commentator Phil Bird and I had a great view for sure. But a pair of binoculars would have been handy. And we were not even close to the back. In front of us was a concourse, a few rows of seats and then a huge empty claret and blue cavern running the whole length of the pitch between us and the lower tier. Then came the outside perimeter which was a good cricket field length away from the pitch.