SPORT

How the other half boing! On Saturday Yampy spent an extremely pleasant afternoon at The Hawthorns. We were fortunate enough to watch the relegation tussle against Sunderland from an executive box. Not that our owners Yampy Solutions Ltd. are quite up to shelling out to the tune of a grand-a-game for this kind of a jolly. My ticket became available via a similarly obscure route to that of many other occupants of Premiership executive boxes; my sister's partner's manager's customer's sponsor paid for it. No double yellow parking on the main road for us - we were ushered into a secure area metres from the ground and wafted up to our suite. The box seats eight in complete comfort; there's coffee making facilities, television, sink, table on which to work out your match bets, and standing area. I was expecting the pitch to be a green postage stamp in the distance, and so was astonished by the scene from the window - we had almost as good a view as Gary Megson (and a better one than the referee judging by some of his decisions). It was as if someone had set up a Subutteo game on a table just outside the box. A quick drink or two in 'Bomber' Brown's bar started the proceedings nicely. I was already feeling a little guilty, supping Grolsch while the 'real fans' shivered in the drizzle, a feeling that increased when I took my comfy warm seat. It was a weird mix of guilt and envy though; you can't boing! boing! properly when squeezed between a police chief superintendant and a bank manager. There were three ways to follow the match, and a combination of all three was necessary for a complete understanding of the game. As well as keeping an eye on the action taking place on the pitch, a large screen in the corner of the stadium showed instant action replays of goals and near misses. However, the television in the suite was still required, switched to Sky's regular updates, because the action replays shown to the fans appeared to deliberately exclude any contentious events such as fouls or dodgy offside decisions. Presumably this is to spare the referee's embarassment and avoid crowd problems, but nevertheless it seems obtuse to have the technology at hand to swiftly resolve disputes on which a match result can depend, then refuse to use it. And so to the match. You know when they say 'it was a game of two halves'? During an entertaining first 45 minutes neither side played as if haunted by relegation fears, and once they had survived an early attempt by Flo that hit the post, West Brom took complete control. Just before the half hour Dichio scored with a powerful header, and five minutes later Koumas took a free kick and bent it like Beckham round the wall to take the Baggies into half-time with a two goal lead. During the interval I may have consumed one too many salmon and cucumber sandwiches, and definitely had my fill of chocolate and coffee eclairs. It appeared that the Albion players had done the same. They were a shadow of the team that had dominated the first half, and after fifteen minutes Kevin Phillips took advantage of a defensive mix up to nab a goal. A few minutes later he scored a second, a brilliant individual effort, cutting in from the touchline (or just beyond it - it looked suspiciously like he had failed to keep it in play) and beating a succession of defenders before rifling a shot past Hoult. So honours even - but a draw was not much use to either side, even though Megson appeared to have settled for one by inexplicably taking Jason Roberts off, and then refusing to give Lee Hughes the chance to create a bit of havoc in the last ten minutes or so. Baggies regulars reckoned that Roberts was not playing well, but he still looked a potent threat to me and his absence up front meant that the ball remained more or less permanently in the WBA danger area for the remainder of the match. It was a great experience to watch a match in complete comfort, with a perfect view of the pitch. And yet, a football game used to be Bovril in a thermos flask, not filter coffee. I left the Hawthorns still confused about whether the executive treatment is the saviour of soccer, or the death of it.

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