The danger of playing for time-outs

OF ALL that is to be admired about American sport, the time-out would probably figure deep down on the list of most who view games in the US from elsewhere in the civilised world. Lovers of the true meaning of sport will regard artificial turf with equal disdain but even the Royal and Ancient are using strips of the stuff to preserve the sacred fairways of St Andrews in readiness for The Open in July so it can be said to have passed into acceptance.

Two-minute time-outs, however, called at the whim of coaches or television stations, are capable of preserving nothing but the staccato rhythm of America's favourite games. It is unfair to criticise the practice because it is the way these games have been traditionally conducted. Suggestions from foreigners that they should try cutting down on interruptions and aim for more freedom of flow and greater spontaneity of on-field action usually draw a blank face.

Now comes serious reason to start imagining what time-outs would do if allowed to spread into football because the world authority Fifa are considering introducing them into the game that for a century and a quarter has had its 90 minutes punctuated only by a half-time interval for respite and refreshment.

This is the organisation from which stemmed the notion a couple of years ago that football would be better served by being split into four quarters instead of two halves. The motive behind this was to make the 1994 World Cup in the US more agreeable to the short attention span of the Americans and to provide more holes in the action for television commercials.

Thankfully, that attempt failed which could be why the game of football did not implant itself in the American bosom once the echoes of the World Cup died down. To pick up a similar theme again so soon seems to reveal a persistence within the governing body to interfere with the solidly established character of the greatest game.

They may feel that if time-outs can help to keep sport in Mammon's good books in the States, they can do similar work in other games in other lands. They may not realise that the time-out system in American sport did not evolve over a long period of time in response to commercial and other pressures. Time-outs have been around almost as long as the games themselves, many years even before the Americans realised how handy they would be.

To attempt to transfer an integral part of one game to another that has never revealed any need for it is an enormous risk. But, putting aside any instinctive alarm that they haven't considered the danger, it may just be possible to allow that Fifa are right to investigate ways of keeping the game abreast of modern life.

In marketing terms, for instance, it has never made sense for football to attract many thousands into a stadium and let them back out again less than two hours later without having taken a more determined lunge at their pockets. A few time-outs are not going to prolong the length of a game by that much but they will usher in a new attitude to the haste with which we stage high-level fixtures. The more immediate and obvious result of their introduction would be the further opportunity for television commercials to which the game is already a helpless prey.

Decisions made by Fifa usually contain a high potential benefit for them and, if we had time-outs in place by the next World Cup in 1998, the extra profit from television advertising would be colossal. But the lasting cost to the game would be far more difficult to estimate. Again, they may bring boons we are not yet able to recognise. At the moment managers are fairly impotent creatures at matches. They can lay their plans beforehand and dictate changes at half-time but during the game they are largely reduced to animated incoherence.

At any given time one or two of our leading managers have to be lashed to a central pillar in the stand during the action to prevent them from slavering at referees. Considering how many are incapable of behaving rationally on the touchline it may not be appropriate to allow them to interrupt proceedings officially. Indeed, there is every justication to ban all of them from the touchline. They have all week to prepare their players for a match. They should be prepared to step back and allow their teams to cope with the demands of the game without touchline interference that, in any case, rarely transmits anything useful to those in the middle of the battle.

It is like teachers being permitted to help their pupils during an examination. There must come a time when players of games, just as players of life, have to be left alone to demonstrate their true worth. It has to be admitted that time-outs would add a new dimension to football management, testing their ability to adjust team plans, and a few might get found out as tactical dunderheads. But a chance to get at their team could also allow them the opportunity to sterilise a game that wasn't going their way. There is an argument that extra stoppages might slow down the frenzied pace that renders the British game incapable of nourishing skilful players, but non-stop action is the basis of our game's attraction.

These points might be worth a debate if we could be sure the change would stop at one or two time-outs per half. History teaches us to beware such assumptions. We began with one substitute and now we have two and a goalkeeper. In international matches they are allowed to choose the subs from five and in the World Cup the entire squad was available to select subs from.

Even a slight further slackening of the rules could see time-outs used for wholesale team changes, perhaps even leading to offensive and defensive line-ups in the style of American football. It would save the wear and tear that a full season imposes on players but it would make the game unrecognisable. At times like these, Britain's dwindling influence at the highest level is to be lamented but at least the strongest possible disapproval ought to be registered. There are enough greedy fingers tearing at sport these days without the mightiest game of all attempting self- disfiguration.

ONE day cable television might burrow its way to my rescue but as one who cannot receive BSkyB because of a large tree, I note the loss of a bunch of boxing bouts from my terrestial screen with the usual resignation. If I really want to see a Bruno, Benn, Naseem or Tyson fight I can always find a set that's showing it. So can anyone else for that matter. The fact that the fights won't be free anymore is part of an unavoidable trend. Meanwhile, I await the time when Sky steals the Wimbledon tennis, thereby giving us non-Sky viewers something to cheer about.

THE comedian Max Boyce successfully pleaded with fellow Welshman Ian Woosnam to allow him to caddie in the pre-Masters par-three competition at Augusta National on Wednesday. But by the sixth hole the wisecracks had dried up as Boyce, toiling in the sun under the weight of the bag, doubted if he could go on much longer. "It may help if you take these out," said Woosnam, removing two large bricks from the bottom of the bag.