Week 8: I Don’t Want To Make Excuses, But…
If I’m ever in a lot of trouble, I know who I’d want in my corner, helping me talk my way out of it.
Deontay Wilder. That’s who.
I woke on Sunday to boxing-dominated headlines of him being ‘schooled’ by Morecambe’s Tyson Fury, the Gypsy King who had – summing up various headlines – produced a masterclass and taught Wilder a proper lesson. He’d had him on the canvas twice before a TKO in the seventh; the American’s corner throwing in the towel as their man rocked back and forth against the ropes.
Except, according to Wilder, that wasn’t how it – or he – went down. He wasn’t schooled, badly beaten, concussed, injured – well, maybe just a minor nick in his ear – or even in any pain. The fury that Fury unleashed on Saturday in Las Vegas ‘didn’t hurt me at all’ said the previously undefeated champion. The loss, you see, was simply down to one thing. His ring-walk costume was too heavy.
And if the towel hadn’t been thrown in, he might have still gone on to win, he added, because ‘I still had five rounds left. No matter what it looked like, I was still in the fight.’ To be honest, it didn’t look great. But it was the costume, which Wilder admitted he had put above everything else, that was the real problem.
To be fair, it probably wouldn’t have helped. Part Transformer – Part Swarovski figurine grows seven feet tall; the jewel-encrusted contraption, a tribute to Black History Month, weighed 40 pounds (more than 18 kilos and at a cost of $40,000) and was a lot of baggage to cart before a fight. By contrast, Fury’s walk wasn’t even a walk; he was carried in on a throne to Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’.
You couldn’t make it up. Pure theatre is certainly was and two more different entrances you could not wish to see. Or exits for that matter. Fury looked like he’s been for a stroll down Morecambe Bay whilst Wilder missed the post-bout interviews to have stitches inserted at the hospital.
As for the fight itself, it looked like it was Fury doing the damage and not the outfit as several punches left Wilder leggy and not a little shell-shocked – I wondered at one point when re-watching it if the problem he had was not wearing the costume but rather taking it off prior to Round One.
After going down twice (one a slip to be fair) in the third round and then again in the fifth, he was bloodied, unstable – a ragdoll, said one of the US commentators – and frankly looked in trouble until the towel came in a couple of rounds later when he was again, on the ropes and the chances of landing one big winning punch had long gone. Wilder said afterwards that he was angry about the towel and that he wanted to ‘go out on his shield’ although at that stage, he was certainly going out of there on something had his team not protected him.
‘You never know when it’s going to come’ said co-commentator Andre Reid about the Bronze Bombers feared right-handed missile. He was right about that. Maybe it will come in the third fight. Wilder has already said he wants it. Everyone else would rather just move onto a unification fight between Fury and Anthony Joshua.
But while Wilder might not be champion in the ring any longer, as a champion of excuses, I’d say he’s still right up there. Although not to his face, obviously.
We shouldn’t be surprised, even if no-one was buying it for a second, least of all the outfit’s designer who probably talked her way out of creating Wilder’s next uniform. But these days, we hear so many excuses, for everything, that it’s more of a shock when someone doesn’t offer one up and simply takes responsibility instead. For a football manager, of a struggling team – lower league or not – it’s a second language.
Here are five that drive me crazy…
The Excuse
- Too many games (aka ‘the players are tired’)
The Reality
There aren’t that tired. Especially when this excuse is trotted out near the start of the season. And there are at least twenty-odd players in a squad so there isn’t any excuse really, but it’s convenient. If anyone is tired, it’s supporters; of hearing it. As always, the players aren’t as tired when they are winning but more so after a defeat. And it’s amazing how managers still talk about Saturday / Tuesday as if it’s a new thing and the leagues only had twenty-four teams, that you play home and away, with cup competitions too, from the start of this season and not for as long as we can remember.
The Excuse
- The conditions (aka ‘it was too windy/wet / or dry/hot etc’)
The Reality
This has to be, pound-for-pound, the weakest of all excuses. Because it’s exactly the same for both teams, and one just adapted better. It’s not as if the rain only lands on the away team, or the windy only blew the losing team’s players. There is a tiny bit of merit in the manager of an away team bemoaning the heat in a European or international fixture but even then, the modern fitness levels shouldn’t lead to much of a difference. So any weather/conditions related excuse is just that, deflecting attention away from the real issues.
The Excuse
- Fans don’t properly understand the game (aka ‘you’ve not played professionally’)
The Reality
Even if they’ve not reached that level, they know enough. I’m a great believer in what I call the ‘Whisker’s’ theory – if eight out of ten cats liked it, it was probably pretty good. It’s actually quite insulting to suggest that a season-ticket holder, for example, doesn’t understand the game when they might watch upwards of forty games per year. So if only ten fans turn up and eight think the manager left it too late to make a change when they were losing, they are most likely right. Or right enough at least.
The Excuse
- The crowd were quiet (aka ‘you didn’t make enough noise so we lost’)
The Reality
‘Are you not entertained?’ screamed Maximus Decimus Meridius when the crowd were a little non-plussed with his performance. Well, no. Seeing as you ask. Granted, he just killed half a dozen other gladiators in less than a minute but we’d paid a lot for those tickets. A first round knockout might look great, but we’ll still possibly feel short-changed if it lasted forty-six seconds. That’s modern life.
The expectation levels these days demand that the team offers reason for the fans to provide encouragement. I’m not saying I agree with it, but if you spend twenty-odd quid just to get in, as well as the associated costs around it, then you are able to choose how and when you cheer your team on. And if they don’t do it on the pitch, then you might not do it off the pitch either. It’s not new and they better get used to it because it ain’t gonna change.
The Excuse
- Our budget is too small (aka ‘we can only beat teams who don’t spend money’)
The Reality
If these were true then why not ask clubs how much cash they have in August, put it into a spreadsheet and then do a data sort in descending order from one to seventy-two (or seventy-one for now)? It would save a lot of time and travelling, wouldn’t it? But budget only tells part of the story. Teams have defied the logic of budget forever (just look at Sheffield United this season, or better still, read my column about Walsall and Manchester City in 1999 that was posted last week). The phrase ‘it’s not the size, but what you do with it’ is never more apt than in football finances – at lower league level especially – so if any manager uses lack of cash as a reason for poor displays, they are not really on the money.
All football fans will have heard any number of these excuses over the years from their own club’s boss. It’s almost a barometer of ambition. So, if your club’s manager is already beginning to moan that the players are knackered, the pitches aren’t much kop, the stadium isn’t vibrant enough and they don’t have the money to compete anyway, then I’d suggest they are already out for the count and thinking of 20120/21.
We deserve more than that. We should definitely expect more.
If anything, the weight of expectation from fans might be the one genuine excuse that does hold water in the modern football world. But it’s the hope that keeps us – and the season – alive…before it kills us.
That’s why we still think we can make it, even at the end of February. Even with only a dozen games to play and still ten points off the last play-off place.
Again, we’re like Deontay. We still believe right to the end, even if it looks bad to everyone else. We simply don’t want to throw in the towel.
No matter what it looks like.
Maybe the managers are right after all. And we are the crazy ones.
Next Time: Not Until It’s Mathematically Impossible
words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist