An Evening With Finey

Thought it was as good a time as any to review The World of Football show on SEN radio's Evenings With Mark Fine program.

A big gripe I have with the football/soccer coverage on SEN is the reluctance of most presenters to stick with either one term for the game or the other. Fearing backlashes from both sides of the Code Wars, they often use "the world game" or "world football" in a way which just seems unnatural. Sometimes it is "the round ball" game, anything to skirt around using either just football or soccer. If they start calling golf "the little dimply ball game" or cricket "the ball and stick game of the old British Empire countries" I can wear it, otherwise show some courage in your convictions and pick either soccer or football and stop talking like there's an elephant in the room who you dare not speak of. Though this show's name is in line with that principle, Fine doesn't seem to jar me with "the world/round" as much as he used to.

Socceroos talk was up first. It was a lot better than the drivel served up by Andrew Gaze and Andy Maher in the morning. Dave Davutovic and Michael Zappone didn't seem to have imbibed of the same happy juice as Andy Harper was drunk on, both during his call of the game on Fox Sports and his appearance on Kevin Bartlett's Hungry For Sport show earlier in the day.

Actually, the national team talk was quite refreshing. Perhaps I shouldn't watch games whilst following twitter so much, as that can often distract you from the real issues. Social media flared up over trivialities (Samantha Jade's World Cup anthem) as well as flogging dead horses to a pulp (state of the pitch) which perhaps only deserved a cursory mention.

Listening to Zappone reading out NPLV results reminded me of glorious radio days gone by. During the interview with Goran Lozanovski he even mentioned the great man Peter Kotsiris. Again, it was very refreshing to hear a football expert on the station with some knowledge of anything outside the select few top European leagues and our domestic A-League.

Despite the show tweeting that the focus would be on the Socceroos (and with a game last night and a World Cup a couple of weeks away that's the way it should be) Davutovic did touch on the subject of recent FFV Board matters. An interview with a NPVL coach, though, was probably not the best way to broach the subject. Lozanovski was understandably reticent to delve too deeply into the matter which is not really his domain and a question more pertinent to a club official or administrator.

Overall it was a solid hour of football talk. In most weeks when there's not a local Cup tie on or an AFC Champions League game on Fox I will keep listening.