Idiot Box
by David Hulme
The TV coverage of the AFF Suzuki Cup tournament was variable in quality. Unlike the largely invisible 2012 European Championships fans could at least watch every game either on Channel 7 or on satellite with ESPN Star Soccer. Channel 7’s coverage was typical of the station with each broadcast commencing as the teams were taking to the field and very brief halftime and full time analysis.
As may be expected, ESPN’s coverage was slicker, more thorough and more professional, but it was let down by some woefully biased commentating in favour of Singapore and Malaysia. The main culprit was Paul Masefield (a Singapore-based former professional footballer who plied his trade in the lower levels of the English Football League and with several clubs in Singapore) and his nadir was the semi-final between Thailand and Malaysia in Bangkok.
His ire was drawn by the admittedly poor performance of Korean referee Lee Min-Hu. But Masefield apparently thought he would match the referee’s incompetence with a performance of his own which plunged the depths of ineptitude. And it wasn’t just the referee in his crosshairs.
After a couple of yellows for Malaysia – both deserved – Phichitpong was booked for Thailand: “about time too”, sneered Masefield. Upon seeing Winfried Schäfer pacing around in the VIP area – he was serving a touchline ban – Masefield snapped: “I don’t know where he thinks he’s going; he’s not allowed to move from there”.
But it was the very soft dismissal of Malaysia’s Fadhli Shas which had Masefield in apoplectic fits: “That is embarrassing! That’s a disgrace! That’s a shambles!”, he thundered before adding a not entirely coherent prediction: “you know, the second half now, there’s gonna be absolute fireworks. It’s gonna go off. That much we do know”. For the record, there weren’t “fireworks” in the second half; it didn’t “go off”.
Halftime allowed our hero to collect his thoughts before launching a bitter, insinuating attack on the Thais: “I can tell you that the Thais are at the centre of ALL that’s controversial about the AFF Cup”. He then provided two examples from the past seventeen years of competition (when Thailand and Indonesia both tried to avoid winning a match in 1998 and a walk off by Thailand in 2007) and also included the sending off in question; a controversy which surely the referee was at the centre of, not Thailand.
Further references were made to the “shambolic” sending off by Masefield and co-commentator PJ Roberts throughout the second half – seventeen references, in fact. There was also persistent use of the term “turning point” in relation to the effect the dismissal had on the game. It wasn’t a turning point at all though, if one respects the true meaning of the idiom. Thailand completely dominated the game and were in a match-winning position before the red card and after the red card. The game didn’t “turn” or “change” or “alter” – all words used by Masefield – at all.
Masefield’s violent contempt for the referee was laid bare during the second half when the ref took too long, in Masefield’s opinion, to allow Malaysia to make a substitution. Without a hint of jocularity in his voice he stated: “he [the referee] needs nothing short of a lobotomy to sort himself out”. Remember, Masefield was the lead commentator; the John Motson or Martin Tyler role. It’s difficult to imagine those two suggesting a referee should have part of his brain surgically removed.
Would that it were only bias and referee abuse! Masefield also showed himself to be ignorant of the culture of Thai nicknames: “Datsakorn’s nickname: Ko! That’s it! K-O. Ko! Ha ha ha!”; ignorant of where the match was taking place: “We are at the Suphachalasai Stadium which is at the top end of the [pause] main strip that is down in the centre of Thailand”; and ignorant of the match conditions when he contended that the pitch was cutting up because it was wet and that the surface was “glistening”. It hadn’t rained in Bangkok for four days leading up to the match.
Embarrassing, disgraceful and shambolic? You said it Mr Masefield.
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