A winter break might not work

Wolves columnist John Lalley is one of the few to have seen worse weather than during a season but does not believe a winter break is the answer.

The postponement of the Black Country derby at the Hawthorns was a disappointing anti-climax, a real downer and frustrating for all concerned.

In all the years I've followed Wolves I've never had any sympathy with the notion of a mid-season break but, looking out of the window right now, I might just be starting to figure things differently.

But the paying public - and boy how we do pay for football these days - rarely is afforded a moment's consideration in any case.

Kick off times are shifted willy nilly to accommodate television schedules, alongside massively inconvenient Sunday and Monday matches arranged at the behest of the broadcasters.

When fixture lists appear in pre-season, apart from the opening day starter, the first game the eye immediately scans to identify is the Boxing Day game.

Players and managers would do anything to dispense with this holiday ritual, close down and start again in early January.

In reality, they congratulate themselves on their professionalism whilst the rest of the population indulges and curse having to turn out.

But chairmen and chief executives eagerly realise that attendances are consistently high during the holiday period. There's more money to rake in and that remains their single most important priority.

This year, Manchester United duo Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney are the two highest profile players stating the case for a winter break.

Both of them, unconvincingly in my view, suggest that the England team would benefit by allowing our international players to rest and approach major tournaments suitably refreshed.

Given an official break from the action, it's not difficult to predict what sort of 'refreshing' some players might indulge in over a football free festive period!

Remember the Tottenham players sneaking off for a binge in Ireland after Harry Redknapp tried to curb their Christmas party? And, this time around, Ledley King managed to get happily blitzed in a London nightspot.

Lord knows what their alcoholic input would amount to without the distraction of football!

So many of the football fraternity still believe in an absolute entitlement to booze themselves into total oblivion come pre-Christmas, regardless of the workload facing them.

Even if the top clubs could restrict their charges to tonic water during a break, no doubt the lucrative trips abroad to play friendly matches would soon become an integral item on the calendar. Big bucks would ensure that no financial opportunity was spurned.

No, the reasons for our abysmal no show at the World Cup in South Africa perhaps merit a deeper and more critical self-appraisal from the players themselves.

As excuses go, the lack of a mid-season break is the reddest of red herrings.

Since Wolves left the Championship, I can't claim to be the most avid viewer of televised games from the second tier, but I did take in the Ipswich against Leicester game last week.

The conditions were dreadful approaching farcical at Portman Road but, from the comfort of the armchair, I was pleasantly entertained.

A struggling Ipswich conjured up some very decent passing football despite the atrocious pitch and deservedly trounced a reluctant Leicester outfit who clearly did not fancy the challenge.

Sven-Goran Eriksson responded post match, in typically philosophic style, suggesting that the snow was more conducive to skiing than football.

He had a point but had Leicester taken anything from the game, no doubt Sven would have praised the referee for his determination to see the match through to its conclusion and hailed the heroic efforts of the ground staff in the face of impossible odds.

With the home side so far in the ascendancy, referee Stuart Attwell must have been determined to see it through, despite marching the players off after an hour to have the pitch markings swept clear.

Whether in the blizzard sweeping Portman Road this had the slightest effect is doubtful.

More likely is that Mr Attwell couldn't resist showboating and ensuring that he remained the focal point of attention, creating a pointless delay as the freezing conditions simply worsened, to keep a television audience on tenterhooks making all and sundry fully aware that he alone was calling the shape of events.

These days, the egos of referees are every bit as colossal as those of the players.

I have always remembered a match I attended against Everton way back in 1961. Apparently, Wolves lost 3-0, not that I or any others in the crowd of 31,000 saw much of it because the game was played out in the pall of a smothering fog.

It was a real pea-souper in the days of belching smoke from chimneys and fags galore on the terraces. Stood in the North Bank near the front, I could discern nothing beyond the penalty box at our end of Molineux.

It was a total waste of time as a spectacle and incidentally played in October, so no mid-term break could have salvaged this game. If you are intent on setting a date designed to allow players to rest up, that's easy, to predict the exact time an English winter will render serious football impossible is quite another.

A mid-season break could easily coincide with ideal weather for football with the resumption being greeted by arctic conditions. The same managers clamouring for the break would then start howling about late season fixture congestion!

The year after the Everton game, Wolves suffered the exasperation of half-time abandonment when leading Albion 2-0 at Molineux.

I never quite fathomed how that game started and was not surprised that it failed to finish. The engaging fact that Wolves won the replay 7-0 may have compensated somewhat but the public remained short changed, we all paid twice for the privilege!

This year and last have produced some of the severest weather in decades, so much so that a panic-stricken government this week, formally consulted their chief scientific advisor asking for his considered expertise relating to forward weather forecasts to try to avoid future chaos.

If this arctic trend continues in future years, football may have to consider some sort of adjustment to its programme but, if this were to see the curtailment of the Christmas and New Year fixtures, I for one would certainly be disappointed.