Football: broken

.An annoying thing about being a highly principled television related blog such as ourselves, is to see one of our principle, er, principles torn asunder by simple circumstance. It's like resolutely refusing to watch The Friday Night Project (as is correct), only to find out that Friday's guest presenter is Larry David or The Dark Haired One Out Of Tatu, and therefore having to tune in. Or, on a lesser scale, having to eat human flesh to survive a plane crash (or, say, to win a bet).

One such principal we've stuck to for years was that, despite what numerous sports columnists might say, it doesn't bloody matter who the anchorman is for football coverage. We've always been able to put up with Gary Line-acre's weak whimsy, Gaby "Sure, My Dad Both Played For And Managed Wales, But I'm Going To Support England Because It'll Be More Marketable" Logan, Matt "Live and Exclusive only on ITV4" Lorenzo's bland ramblings or HelloandwelcometofootballonfiveI'mJohnbarnes, because the real reason we're here is to watch the football that'll be on in a minute. Since about 1988, we've been telling anyone who'll listen (friends, relatives, people on buses) that anyone claiming to be a football supporter who actually cares whether the person sitting on a comfy chair in a corporate box with a broadcaster's logo in the background is any good, should just go and live in a ditch.

Sure, it'd be nice if all presenters of televised football were as good as Adrian Chiles, but if they prefer to trot out a Ruud Nistelrooy / long face 'quip' instead, we could be less bothered. As long as there's a decent amount of actual football coming up soon (as opposed to the early days of ITV1's The Premiership, or latterly 'Ally and Andy' standing on the touchline with a plastic table for no useful reason whatsoever), we're happy. And that's the way we've felt ever since The Match burst onto our screens, feeling the need to jazz up that whole 'football' business.

So, how foolish did we feel when tuning into five, only to be confronted with ubiquitous radio eejit Colin Murray hosting the coverage of Bolton's clash with Marseille. Granted, it could have been worse (i.e. Moyles), but within seconds he'd already said 'Chelski', which even a jug-eared crisp peddler would have baulked at, and we were scrabbling for the remote control to watch five minutes of EastEnders instead. And we really, really hate EastEnders. So: thanks, Colin Murray. You've ruined football for us.