Serious John's Part I - t3h Int3rNeTtZ5zz r t@kInG 0vA!!1!

"The robots are taking over... FULL STOP!" - The Streets

It would seem Mr. Skinner's prophetic demo tune may have proved true before it's time. Just as everyone is talking about how no human can live without access to the internet comes the hammer blow that could just break the camel's back. The England versus Ukraine game is only available via streaming it through the internet, this catastrophe might well just bring the internet community and it's billions of junkies crashing down to earth with a thundering symphony of broken qwerty keyboards and shattered Intel Celeron processors. The backlash that is currently bubbling, all gruesome, angry and full of malicious intent, much like Lee Cattermole, is set to be unleashed come Saturday. As Wayne Rooney performs his quadricep stretches, little does he know the whole virtual world will be crumbling as English and Ukranian football fans alike tear down the very cyber-fabric of the internet's thin, silk, sarong and expose the whole Interweb as a pointless blip on this pointless blip of a planet's pointless blip of a timeline... Not blip actually, that's far too 'technologoical sounding innit'.
Of course, none of this will happen and of course no one really wants it to happen. The whole debacle and debate surrounding this issue of streaming a football match on the internet has grown out of all proportion. This deformed giant really has no deformed giant legs to stand on. Many people are decrying the fact that the internet has somehow been able to obtain the rights to one of our lovely human football matches, as though 't3h It3rNeTtZ5zz' is some kind of sentient being out to relieve us of our national game when the fact of the matter is Kentaro, the owner's of the rights to show the game, simply didn't recieve enough interest from any of television's biggest hitters. BBC and ITV were too worried about their overblown 'Ratings War' between 'Strictly, Come On Bruce Forsyth Really?!?!' and 'The £ Factor', also apparently the new series of 'You've Been Framed' starts and really, who would want to watch the English national team play a qualifier inthe Earth's greatest sports competition when that would be so obviously interfering with some bumbling grandad tripping over his caravan's mains supply cable? I ask you. It seems, however, that the main sticking point for the vast majority of the anti-englandukraineontheinternetdebate is the cost of watching it on the internet. The Times Online blog states: "They [England supporters] will be forced to log on to the internet and pay up to £11.99 for live coverage of the match." This suggests that Fabio Capello is going to rock up in a metallic purple low-ride Escalade and put a Glock 17 to your temple and demand in his loveable broken English "You'sa need'a to pay to watch'a us'a play EH?! Capiche?! You understand?Otherwise you'll be'a taking a itty-bitty swim with the fishes eh?!" Firstly, 'log on' to the internet, for an internet blog they sound like a Dickensian character talking about the internet. I can't remember ever 'logging on' to the internet. Secondly, no one is being forced to pay £11.99 to watch the England game. Just like no one is forced to pay their monthly subscription to Sky Sports. it's just another case of supply and demand. Would it have been better for Kentaro to have just kept hold of the rights and shown it on their completely defunct and non-exsistent channel Setanta? Or maybe they could just give us a semi-fictional match report (nothing like theHiston updates we so accurately provide on this blog). I know that many people are laying the blame in the right place and I'm just going to long-jump in and drop my little chunk at the feet of the federations. FIFA and UEFA are the real culprits here, well along with the BBC and ITV, we expected more lads. As the Mark Perryman of the England Supporter's Association said earlier in the week: “A qualifier should be available for everybody on free-to-air TV. Fifa and Uefa should insist asa condition of entry that all nations sell their games to terrestrial stations, whether home or away.” I think this is a move that would benefit the image of football as a whole, returning it to the staple of football around the world, your everyman. Nearly every extraordinary footballer throughout the ages has grown up a victim of their social situation, poor and with little to fill his heart with happiness but the love of watching and playing a humble game called football. It is an inevitable progression in the evolutionary scale of the game that money would become such an integral part of the game and in many ways it has benifited it. The financial growth working in a symbiotic circle with the growth and outreach of the sport. However, by taking away the availability of an England match on a TV or big screen down your local boozer you are taking away, not only the chance for younglings around the country to watch their heroes form a dream team of the best English players of the time but also you are removing an integral part of the community spirit that the is one of the founding elements of the beautiful game of OURS. The internet is an amazing and useful tool to the human race so the fact it is absorbing the human race's favourite sport is no suprise, look at the amount of websites, podcasts and super awesome blogs ;-) already devoted to it. Streaming of football matches is already a widely used feature of the internet and isn't really such an earth-shaking event that the sensationalising TV and newspaper pundits are making it out to be. They are painting a picture of a darkened room, lit only by the blueish light of a laptop screen with a gremlin draped in a ragged St. George's cross hunched over it probably eating a microwave burger and drinking a Red Bull and 'Twittering' and 'Facebooking' nude pictures to each other while purchasing the latest 'Hoodie' and 'iPhone' to waste their lives away on instead of getting out and playing football. This monster is rare if it even exsists at all. We all still enjoy watching a match in the presence of other people. A trip to any public house come 3.00 Saturday afternoon or Sunday lunchtime wil prove the theory. Or the tens of thousands in attendance at football grounds around the nation. The real villains of the piece are all abbreviations: BBC, ITV and FIFA. Let's just all sit back and see how Saturday turns out, I'm sure you'll find a way of watching the match just as I will. Let's just sit back and see how the experiment unfolds. Rather than railing against it, why not see how we can make this idea into something workable and ideally free to all someday.

J.F.R. (POSTING FROM t3h Int3rNeTt5z5zzZ!1!!!!?!