I am, at the time of writing, in a very good mood — such a good mood, in fact, that I'm not bothered in the slightest by the hangover I acquired after spending last night on the razz (as they say where I come from).
The reason is simple. On Monday the football team I have supported since I was a kid, Ipswich Town, won promotion to the Premiership by beating Barnsley four-two in the First Division play-off final at Wembley. We'd reached the play-offs the three previous seasons, but each time we'd fallen at the semi-final stage. This time, after beating Bolton in the semis, magnificent goals from Tony Mowbray, Richard Naylor, Marcus Stewart and Martijn Reuser — and some equally magnificent goalkeeping from Richard Wright — sent us back where we belong.
I've still got the chants of the jubilant Town fans ringing in my ears:
Are you watching(Actually, that bit was just to wind up Tribune's ad manager. He is a secret Norwich fan, so ashamed by his team's miserable performances in recent years that he pretends to follow the Arsenal — or is it Spurs this year? I don't really condone the description of Norwich supporters as "scum". They're just fickle, that's all.)
Are you watching
Are you watching Norwich scum?
Seriously, though, I'm not expecting the elation to last too long into next season. Ipswich play attractive football, and we've got some good players. But we are going to struggle to compete with the big boys in the Premiership.
The average gate at the Town's ground, Portman Road, is just under 20,000. That is nearly one-third of the gate at Manchester United, England's biggest club — and Portman Road's capacity is being increased by 5,000 over the summer. But Ipswich have only the tiniest fraction of Manchester United's resources.
Last year, United made a profit of more than £30 million on a turnover of more than £110 million excluding transfer dealings. Ipswich lost £1 million on a turnover of £7 million, making up the shortfall (and a bit more) by selling our best player, Kieron Dyer, to Newcastle United.
Of course, the Town will benefit from going up, to the tune of something like £12 million a year next season, and more once a new broadcasting rights deal, currently under negotiation, is finalised. To clubs still stuck in the First Division — let alone to those in the Second and Third Divisions — it looks as if we've joined English football's elite.
And in a way we have. But even among Premiership clubs there are extraordinary disparities in wealth — and they are getting bigger by the year as cash from broadcasters and commercial sponsors floods into football. In financial terms, Manchester United are now almost in a league of their own, with a turnover nearly twice that of Chelsea, the next richest club. Then there are another half-dozen clubs of roughly comparable wealth, then another half-dozen with reasonable hopes of matching them some day — and then the rest.
It is no accident, to use an old Leftist cliché, that as the richest half-dozen clubs have become ever-richer they have increasingly come to dominate the game. They can afford the best players and managers, and teams with the best players and managers are most likely to win matches. In the past five seasons, only one club outside the richest dozen, Leicester City, has won a major domestic trophy.
All of which is just the way it goes, you might think. But in the long run football with an ever-smaller number of serious contenders for honours is a real turn-off for everyone apart from supporters of the big clubs. Unless the money in the game is spread around more evenly, it will not be long before English football becomes almost as predictable as Scottish football, in which Rangers are champions nearly every year and only Celtic ever have a realistic hope of catching them.
There is a strong case, in other words, for believing that the health of football requires an urgent redistribution of wealth — something that the big clubs will never sanction. Which is where legislation could come in. It's a mark of the superficiality of "New" Labour's much trumpeted commitment to the beautiful game that it has never apparently considered any such thing.
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On a different matter entirely, the most shocking thing about the elections to Labour's National Executive Committee — apart, of course, from the editor losing his seat — was the small number of people who voted.
Precisely how small is a matter for conjecture. Even members of the NEC were not told how many ballot papers were sent out and how many members returned them or phoned in their votes: all they were given was a figure for turnout, 25 per cent, along with the number of votes cast for each candidate.
Because no one could vote for more than six candidates, it is easy enough to work out that at least 60,823 people voted. (You just have to add all the votes cast for each candidate and divide by six.) But of course not everyone did voted for six candidates, so that's not the actual number.
It is difficult to explain the reticence about hard figures unless Millbank is trying to cover something up. But what? Is it just trying to play down the low turnout — which would be peculiarly stupid — or has there been a slump in total party membership over the past year? As the late John Junor used to put it, I don't know, but I think we should be told.
