“You don’t go to the cinema and ask for Coronation Street to be on in the corner. You don’t go to the fishmongers and ask for a pork chop.”
So the All England Lawn Tennis Club member – who, for some reason, harrumphed that he wished to remain anonymous – replied when asked if it would not be rather more “all England” to show the Euro 2024 quarter-final against Switzerland somewhere on this vast property.
In fairness, the response made plenty of sense if you treat Wimbledon solely as a sporting event and not as a quasi social occasion.
Yet on a rather flat middle Saturday at the Championships – when, let us be honest, the most notable news seemed to be the Murray clan’s disappointment with Emma Raducanu for not allowing the Scot a second leaving do in three days – the AELTC’s policy appeared more belligerent than ever.
‘We’ll only be showing tennis’
They did not budge for the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup, or for the final of the 2021 Euros, and this year is to be no different, even if the men’s final runs over and Gareth Southgate’s team once again advances to the very last step.
“The big screens will be showing tennis,” AELTC chair Debbie Jevans said. “All the screens around the grounds will be showing tennis. We’ll only be showing tennis. If England are doing well a few people may slip away to watch football, but the Euros won’t affect attendances. We’ve had record applications, all the hospitality packages have sold out so we’re not nervous.”
There you go. The tills are ringing and to hell with those creating the ring. Jevans’ words were not quite true, as the screens in the media centre showed the football. But guess what they did? They actually pulled down the blinds, so the plebs outside could not peer in and dare see Declan Rice pass the ball sideways.
The powers-that-be insist that is because the passage outside the media centre is a main thoroughfare and for safety reasons there should not be groups congregating by the windows. However, at the time, it was hosing down and the only individuals gathering were ducks or subaqua specialists.
The rules threaten to suffocate
In truth, it all stunk of the old Augusta National philosophy that the patrons can enjoy themselves, but only if the club concurs. The AELTC is best mates with the ANGC – twinned like Moscow and Pyongang – and the ties appear to run deeper every year. The rules threaten to suffocate. You cannot vape on “The Hill”, that slope of grass that they cannot even call “Henman Hill”, presumably because of image rights. For reference, The Hill is outdoors.
You cannot vape in a queue (also outdoors). This includes at The Sausage Grill where I watched people line up for 40 mins for their £7.90 hotdog and then be told they would have to join another line to apply ketchup. That was another 15 minutes. The water stations are £5, but refillable, so long as you bring your own bottle. And it is “Alpine sourced”.
Peter Alliss, the late great golf commentator, once quipped: “I purchased a bottle of water the other day and on one side it claimed to have been ‘purified for thousands of years, cascading through natural springs’. On the other side, it read ‘best before 6 June, 2017’.”
To be fair, this shameless exploitation is not confined to tennis. Sports fans are treated like unrespected extras at almost every big event. Not only to be taken for granted, but ripped off. The refusal to screen a football match in Dusseldorf is only a small thing, but a big thing in the sense of this scenario.
I went in search of watching the game. Henman Hill was the obvious place. It has two mammoth screens. Surely one of those pixel behemoths could beam in the pictures? Not a chance. Not when Ons Jabeur was playing Elina Svitolina on Centre Court and Iga Swiatek versus Yulia Putintseva on Court 1. Instead, groups huddled around mobile phones and credit to Wimbledon, because the supreme quality of wifi connection would make Nasa blush.
The biggest groan on The Hill all afternoon was not when Cameron Norrie lost in straight sets or when the news came through that Harriet Dart, on the unscreened Court 2, had also succumb and that Raducanu is the sole Brit left in either of the singles, but when Breel Embolo opened the scoring for Switzerland.
The biggest cheer, naturally, was when Trent Alexander-Arnold converted the winning penalty. By then, the entire Hill was bunched around one smart device or another and celebrations even erupted in pockets on Centre Court. With the sun finally out, it was party time. Henman Hill became Bellingham Bank.