They say that the key to great sports commentary is knowing when to say something and when to say nothing, so we must at least recognise that Mark Lawrenson tailed off at the right moment. When asked in an interview for the Sunday Times about the reason for his departure from the BBC, the answer was seemingly immediate: “Well, I’m 65 and a white male, so you know…”
If you can say a lot in three little words, an ellipsis can be a syntactical Pandora’s Box. It hints at Lawrenson’s deep bitterness at his enforced push into retirement and of his suspicion of the decision-makers at the national broadcaster. It offers a message of love, as so many others before him have done, for the great endangered species of our time: the bloke who says it like it is. RIP u are wiv da angels now.
For all Lawrenson’s selfless worry for a cohort that makes up over 40 per cent of the British population, football punditry will probably manage. In the nascent new series of Football Focus, 56-year-old white male Martin Keown has appeared twice on the sofa and 39-year-old white male Glenn Murray once. If they are the only breeding pair still in the wild, someone should probably tell Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Graeme Souness, Roy Keane, Alan Shearer and Danny Murphy to check in with the World Wildlife Fund.
Perhaps Lawrenson is right, and it’s the colour of his skin that is the root of his persecution. After all, how else can you explain excellent pundit Dion Dublin and excellent pundit Nedum Onuoha being invited onto Football Focus this season. And don’t get me started on Rachel Finnis-Brown, Fara Williams and Jill Scott – when did they ever play international football?
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On the age issue, Lawrenson probably has a point. According to YouGov data, Football Focus is most popular with those aged 16 to 41. The oldest viewers in that category were eight when Lawrenson retired from playing football. To most, he is purely a pundit and punditry is a competitive industry into which former players are entering every year, forcing up the level of insight demanded. Rather than beomaning your exit from the pool, celebrate that you swam in it for 30 years.
There are two cliched red flags of self-description, and Lawrenson used both in that interview. The first is “Marmite”, often said with a flush of pride: I am what I am and my recipe won’t change now. Love me or hate me, and they fully accept that both extremes exist and that there is a large spectrum in between, you can’t say I’m not me.
For 30 years, that worked for Lawrenson. At times his grumpiness – deliberate or natural – gave the impression that he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. His successful persona was based on a premise of gruff suspicion about the trappings of modern football that landed with much of his audience. “Dislocated shoelace” was one disdainful assessment of a player rolling on the floor. If that did eventually become a little hackneyed, he was also an antidote to his peers. He was real in a hyperbolic world. Not that it matters, but I warmed to that antidote.
But the common theme amongst Marmite-rs is the faux shock that follows their demise. They agonise that the world is changing around them. Lawrenson’s implied offence is that he should continue to be in his job because he’s always been in his job. That’s not an argument that washes – or should wash – in any industry.
The second red flag – and this is really where Lawrenson let himself down – is using “anti-woke” as a personality type. The initial accepted definition of wokeness, aware of social and political issues that disproportionately affect minorities or the powerless, has been lost in a fog of the culture war. In this context it is a slur, a weakness for lily-livered kowtowing to a lefty agenda. It is a synonym not for political correctness, but political correctness gone mad, hijacked by the right as a one-word smear to put any dissenting argument on the back foot.
And, when used to describe yourself, it comes with an air of sickly self-satisfaction that you are stoic enough to be secure in your own opinions and won’t be pushed off course. In Lawrenson’s case, that’s accurate: he didn’t change; he was proudly Lawro. But by bringing wokeness into it with his “Is it because I am white?”, he undermines all the warmth many of us felt because it becomes, deliberately or otherwise, an attack on diversity. Lawrenson isn’t anti-woke, he’s pro-Lawrenson.
Nobody likes to be reminded of their age, least of all when you perceive it as an explanation for your own lack of relevance because it is outside your control. Lawrenson is probably right that changing his demeanour or his style would not have worked. So why bother?
But in those circumstances, acceptance is dignity. You are not the star. You are one of many. You are not owed a living by anyone. The BBC are allowed to look for what they believe to be better and they are allowed to move you on if they find someone. If they wish to diversify their roster to better reflect its audience, brilliant.
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Women could save the failing Presidents Cup and help PGA Tour win its war against LIV Golf22 September, 2022This may all appear like over-analysis; reaction to the reaction to the event. The best way to ignore the “anti-woke” cries are to ignore them. But the patronising of Alex Scott, the insinuation that his job was made harder because of her, the entitled moans of a man who breathed privileged air for 30 years and the use of his race and gender as foundations of his bitterness demand a response. They might all give Lawrenson a dose of self-assurance at a difficult time, and we wish him well. But they also exemplify exactly why he might have been moved on.
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