Count your blessings in tick-tocking frenzy (From York Press)

Count your blessings in tick-tocking frenzy

9:20am Saturday 7th January 2012 in TKO Tony Kelly By Tony Kelly, Deputy sports editor

EVEN with 2011 now banished to a footnote in history, we are still being assailed by a cacophony of countdowns that would have the master of that television show, the late Richard Whiteley, spinning in his resting place of two vowels and three consonants.

There’s the countdown to the Olympics, the countdown to the Euro 2012 finals, and more pressing to the point of inducing megaheadaches in the frontal lobe, the countdown to the January football transfer window.

The latter, while featuring on the websites of many a distinguished or derisory newspaper – you pays your money, you take your pick – is the virtual preserve of Sky Sports News.

Almost since the last of the fireworks spluttered splat on to the damp and cold surface of the first minutes of 2012, SSN, as it shall now be referred to, zapped up its own twice-yearly, techno timepiece ticking the days, hours, seconds and, if they could get the science boffins to illustrate it, even the nano-seconds down until the January 31 deadline.

All the presenters are schooled in the slick presentation of such illuminating “facts” as to whether striker ‘X’ from club ‘A’ can point to a map to show he knows where club ‘Y’ is, thereby necessitating a flurry of speculation that he is about to complete a mega-million pound move.

Each day there seems to be even more of a flurry activity akin to the occupants of a beehive overdosing on manuka honey outlining how Carlos Tevez (yawn, zzzzzzz) is soon to ship up at either Milan of Inter or AC, Barcelona or Madrid, Galatasaray or Gretna Green, Napoli or Neptune AFC.

What SSN do not appear to realise is how all this guff and nonsense is putting viewers off.

When there is already a media barrage of conjecture about who is going where for so many untold squillions, and who has fallen out with which boss, and who just fancies a different colour shirt and badge to slobber over, SSN’s overkill does just that – assassinate the senses, never more so than when they wheel out the garrulous celt Jim “och, it’s all rockin’ here on Sky tonight” White.

Thank the lord – the celestial one, not Bob of Burnley fame – that the extra day in a leap year is in February.

Can you imagine a deadline extending to January 32? The White tornado would surely explode like an extra from Scanners.

Fortunately, while all eyes are on, or rather being dulled, by the transfer window steaming up, England’s summer jaunt to the Ukraine for their group matches in the European Championships co-hosted with Poland have essentially been put into cold storage.

But you can bet somewhere, deep in some studio bowels, there is an SSN crew preparing to overload us with the sort of tedious clap-trap which will make the transfer countdown appear to be indispensable viewing.

There is, however, one countdown that is justified and that is the one to the 2012 Olympic Games.

The Olympiad, the first on these shores since 1948, is still getting a load of stick for its London-centricity.

But with the door opening this week to wannabe spectators getting their mitts on returned tickets then the groundswell of support is increasing.

And why shouldn’t it? For all the ballyhoo, for all the cash spent, for all the needless posturing, the Olympics are the greatest sporting show on earth and this nation has the privilege of hosting such.

And mercifully the Games are available to terrestrial viewers, so it won’t feel as if the sky above is caving in on us all.

ANEW 50 pence coin was issued this week in which its reverse side explained the offside rule.

The reaction on the street when the newly-minted coinage was shown to punters varied from not being aware of said controversydogged rule, or pawing it in admiration as to its shiny and succinct illustration of what the rule actually entailed.

And adding insight to inspiration, there was no Sky TV talking head, no glaring graphics, no widescreen, 3D, HD, lad-dee-dar screen illustrations, nor no “bigger, better and ad nauseam” accompaniment, to add another unnecessary 50 pennethworth to the debate.

What was even better was one woman’s reaction: “It’s like life, innit? You’re either offside, or you’re not offside. Just like life.”

Brilliant, unlike Liverpool FC’s desultory apology in the wake of the club agreeing not to appeal against the eight-match ban the FA imposed on striker Luis Suarez after he was found guilty of making racist comments to Manchester United opponent Patrice Evra.

Being a lifelong Reds fan I never thought I would have to write how the club’s deserved and glowing reputation for standing up for the game’s core values and for extolling the virtues of justice has been sullied by its response to the imposition of a deserved penalty.

Turning Suarez, who admitted using the offensive word “negro” to Evra, into a cause celebre has been way out of order and potentially damaging to the club’s status.