Whether it’s a silly season story or not, the credibility of the Woodward to football rumours demonstrates yet another way in which ‘sound business principles’ are making their way into football. The objectification of management – the idea that managing a company involves a set of transferable skills, rather than more specialist industry knowledge – turned from business fad into accepted common sense years ago. It moved into football at the boardroom and executive level, as the idea of a chairman as monied lifelong fan became more diluted.
It was only a matter of time before somebody decided to apply the concept to managing the playing staff: if not Woodward now, then another talented ‘man-manager’ later. It seems apt that it’s Rupert Lowe promoting this idea – his guiding principle seems to be that Southampton be run as a business in more than just the financial sense, that the gap between on-pitch tactics and business strategy is smaller than people think and that a sufficiently talented CEO (i.e. him) is all that’s needed.
You can catch a whiff of objective management in Lowe’s comments in the BBC story. “If we can learn from him about…becoming world-class” – this is management theory in a nutshell, quality as a skill-set to be learned, not from experienced specialists but from Homo Managerius, the businessman for whom success is a golden touch. Management theory sees success as something which can be conferred upon any business by getting the right men at the top: industry knowledge is often seen as a hindrance, a legacy quality that inherently resists change.
It’s interesting that so little of the comment on the Woodward notion asks what the players might think of him. The company I work for has embraced management theory eagerly, importing a strata of ‘business development’ professionals whose lack of interest – or open contempt – for what the firm actually does is barely disguised. The result is a delighted boardroom, happy to be embracing ‘fresh thinking’, and increasing resentment all the way down the rest of the company, where respect for what these people have achieved is turning quickly to frustration. If football is just another business, might the same thing not happen with the Southampton – or England – team?
Barry Sheavils in TMFD • No Comments
Final reel fandango
Randomly turning on the telly on a lazy day at the home of your choice is a good way to catch the best bits (i.e. the last half-hour) of films that you can’t be arsed watching all the way through. As it so happened this last Bank Holiday Monday, we switched on to find MacGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis just edging into its gripping climax, followed by Jim being pursued up the mast of the Hispaniola by a murderous pirate in Treasure Island (recognisable immediately just from the creepy music) on the other side. This was, I think you’ll agree, a pretty hot combination of half-missed movies.
The latter had the advantage of being one of my most-favoured childhood films (none of your poxy Railway Children for me, I wanted blood and guts and piracy on the high seas. However I did enjoy the Sound of Music frequently) and also a really excellent (and indeed, the first) live-action Disney number, with lots of classy “Aharrrr Jim lad”-ing and the like. The only thing that mars it in my view is the corn-fed American brat playing Hawkins, but I suppose it was the time of the child star production line, and at least all the salty sea dogs are from excellently chewy places like Dorset and Suffolk. Half the cast were born in the late 1800s and many were dead before I was born (including the brat, who got involved with nasty old drugs as he grew out of adorable moppethood), which sends a bit of a frisson down the spine for some reason. Robert Newton, a cracking Long John Silver, was David Lean’s Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist and played a few other pirates in his time, which shows that typecasting can work out splendidly.
The first film we caught the end of didn’t have such a good pedigree, although it did, fantastically, have Brian Blessed shouting a lot, of course) and a bit of mystical guff about lost civilisations and cults, not to mention Richard Dean Anderson‘s spectacular mullet. We simply couldn’t believe (having marvelled at this follicular glory) that it was made as recently as 1994, even though it’s right there in undoubtable internet print. I was also wondering if RDA was Canadian, and his birthplace of Minneapolis is close enough for me to feel vindicated in my accent-spotting expertise. Anyway, there was archaeological skulduggery, ancient magnetic suspension locks, and a steam-driven altar thingy in the side of a volcano. Oh, and MacGyver powered a clapped-out jeep with missiles strapped to the back to get away from some evil Eastern European military types. Hurrah for TV movies with 80s stars veering dangerously close to the soup kitchen (this was before Stargate SG-1 kicked off, of course).
So, to sum up: I enjoy holiday television programming, and am increasingly reliant on imdb for my trivia junk. I wonder if it’s available on WAP?
Liz x in Do You See • No Comments
“I have always been delighted by Deleuze’s disdain for ‘travelling’”: K-Punk’s holiday write-ups (scroll up on the main page of his site for some stuff on Portmeiron). I can’t claim more than the most nodding aquaintance with M.Deleuze but I’ve always been broadly suspicious of the cult of travel, too. Or – let’s be a devil and capitalise – Travel, since going to places remains as enjoyable as ever.
The cult of Travel is hard to pin down. It may very well not exist outside my grumpy brain. It’s best understood by going into a bookshop and having a poke around the ‘Travel Writing’ section. I did this the other day and found myself reminded of Kevin Rowland. Somewhere in Dexys’ Don’t Stand Me Down album there’s an exchange where KR has been listening to the radio. “It was alright, it was OK – I’m not lodging any complaints or anything – there was just one problem.” “What was that?” “It all sounded the same.” “You mean it all sounded similar?” “I mean it all sounded the same.”
What Kevin’s talking about – I reckon – is that glazed impression of homogenity that happens when you’re looking for something that just isn’t there. I don’t know what I was looking for in the travel section. Well, I do – I was looking for a book I actually wanted to read. But what might constitute that book? I don’t know. What I do know is that everything there, from Round Ireland With A Fridge to Tuscany Days to Tibet: A Love Story, WASN’T IT.
Maybe it’s a definition thing. When someone starts thinking they’re doing ‘travel writing’, they lose me. That’s one reason I wanted to do a month on Blog 7 about travel, to see what we’d do with the idea. If you want to join in, or if you want to tell me what travel writing I need to read to change my mind, email me. Meanwhile, bon voyage Blog 7.
Tom in Blog 7 • No Comments
“Margaret Meehan, Parkdale?”
Don’t know how this will translate to the Brits but I never do, did y’all have SCTV over there ever? Did it become a cult over there the way it did over here with lonely kids who stayed up way too late because they couldn’t sleep because their brains kept going over and over things that they had done that day, early teens the EXACT SAME AGE as Sam Weir in “Freaks and Geeks,”, kids who wanted to think they were smart but wanted other people to be smarter so they’d get the geeked-out jokes and references they were throwing around, kids who drank this stuff in like screw juice because they knew they’d finally found people who were not only smarter they were also cooler and better and awesomer and nicer too because they were Canadian?
I hope so. I loved SCTV, me and my geek friends; I had jock friends and rich-kid friends and nerd friends and girlfriends too, but never felt more comfortable than with my geek friends no matter what they looked like, especially if they could quote a whole Johnny LaRue whiny soliloquy or Lola Heatherton exclamation (“I wanna have ALL your children!”). I watched this in its 30-minute original version and its 90-minute WTF NBC version and committed it all to faulty memory and thought I’d have to keep it there.
Then that sweet invention called the DVD was invented, and a sweeter invention called my brother Tim who just sent me the 5disc set just out on Shout! Factory. I watched part of the first episode tonight as I made my incredible Quinoa in Semi-Spicy Sauce* and damn if I wasn’t suddenly back 13 years old again (a white t-shirt and Levis 501 jeans and some 250-pound basketball high-top Nikes, still a few months away from earning my letterman’s jacket to complete the uniform), staying up late, looking for soulmates:
Guy Caballero. Bob and Doug McKenzie. Count Floyd. Dr. Tongue and Igor. Edith Prickley. The Schmenge Brothers. Bobby Bittman and Sammy Maudlin. Gerry Todd. Earl Camembert. Mrs. Falbo. Bill Fracas. Dusty Towne. Sid Dithers.
And poor sweet pathetic Margaret Meehan, doomed and destined to ring in even though she doesn’t know the answer, even though Alex Trebel (sic) has ordered her not to touch the button, she can’t help it, tears coursing down her face, she HAS to guess the answer before the question’s read. “Henry Miller?” “Victor Hugo?” “The Beatles?” “Love to Love You Baby?” Oh Catherine O’Hara, you were my first love. Well, second maybe, gotta count Kim S*****. Oh, and Stacey L********** too. And Nadia Comaneci and Chris Evert and Lola Falana. Whatever. Anyway.
So I had to get that out of my system. Forgive me. Holla back.
*Saute 1/2 an onion, stalk celery, 1 chocolate pepper, stalk bok choy, frozen corn, all-spice, chili powder. Add organic quinoa and 1 can diced tomatoes. Stir like a bastard then cover and reduce heat. Freak out periodically and stir like aforementioned bastard, so it doesn’t stick to the bottom, that’s gross. Keep adding water to puff up the quinoa. It’s the perfect protein you know.
Matt in Do You See • No Comments