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How the internet killed the Own Goals and Gaffes star

Penny for your thoughts, Brendan... © Getty Images

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When the aliens, possibly under the watchful direction of David Icke, come to sift through the smouldering remains of our civilisation, they will no doubt give special attention to the DVD of Robbie Savage's Football Howlers.

Their alien boffins and eggheads will analyse this 2011 collection of own goals, missed sitters and human males being hit in the groin to inexplicable hilarity and they will note that it was one of the last of its kind.

Few such Goals and Gaffes Christmas market DVDs were made after it, so the aliens will reach one of two conclusions. One: that this Savage-narrated product was such a masterpiece that homo sapiens decided there was no need to explore this art form further, turning its attention instead to matters like world peace, space exploration, the Ebolapocalypse or how to stop melted cheese going rubbery. Or two: that humankind's invention of the internet rendered the comedy compilation DVD obsolete.

A sad thought for the human race in general, and Robbie Savage in particular, but I think probably the more likely of the two conclusions.

Sunday's QPR v Liverpool match contained two belters that would once have taken pride of place in any self-respecting howlers and spurned-sitters catalogue.

Richard Dunne takes his OG CV to 10 © Getty Images

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Mario Balotelli's Liverpool career has so far been a mixed bag, to say the least, but his missed chance with the Superhoops' goal gaping was the lowest moment yet.

Within a few seconds, it was available to view all over the world, via internet and those little looped clips that the Premier League and their TV partners are so unhappy about. Within a minute or two, the amusing memes and Photoshops followed.

Once upon a time, a truly epic missed sitter was allowed to grow organically in our collective imagination, to be savoured, talked over, aggrandised. Ronnie Rosenthal hitting the bar when clean through versus Villa in 1992, Kanu contriving to miss from a yard against Boro, even the Rocky Baptiste triumph for Harrow Borough against Waltham Abbey, when he failed to score from the actual goal line, all achieved their legendary status through retelling in the pub, through occasional clips on They Think It's All Over or A Question Of Sport, or on DVD. Their greatness flourished in the telling, and those who saw them first-hand at the ground could claim to have Been There, like people at the Cavern Club for the early Beatles' gigs Were There.

Mario's miss was splendidly awful; a crowning sulphurous Brussels sprout atop the canteen roast dinner of mechanically recovered chicken-type meat that was a stinking individual performance. A few years ago, it would have been talked of for weeks and months, but there's no time for that these days. While we all enjoy our addiction to football's instant hits, the speed and availability of the footage strips away some of the magic.

Also donning the comedy wig and bulbous honking red nose in the QPR-Liverpool match was Richard Dunne, the Premier League's record own goal scorer and sometime Pie-eating Champion of the North. When Richard started banging them in at the wrong end, football was still played between villages using a pig's bladder, and his OG CV is a rich and varied one. Perhaps it's the bulk that allows him to get himself in the right (wrong) positions.

But, like the Mario miss, the Dunne OG will not live long in the mind: there's just too many of them about these days. Access to football foolishness from Kazakhstan to Peru, from Norway to New Zealand means that we are never more than a YouTube link away from FUNNYEST OWN GOAL EVA IN QATAR LEAGE videos.

It feels like a devalued currency, for there is no more delightful experience at football than a really sickening, unlucky own goal, a centre half putting through his own net with a thunderbolt volley that he could not score at the right end in a thousand tries.

An astonishing I-could-have-scored-that miss or a calamitous OG was once a treat to be savoured. Now it's like having pizza for every meal. The moments that made up the Gaffes and Own Goals DVDs are part of our shared football folk memory, and the Mayfly life-span of each and every football incident has robbed us of that. Perhaps they'll just have to put Robbie Savage on the internet.

Alan Tyers writes for the Daily Telegraph, ESPNcricinfo and is the author of six books, the most recent of which is 'Tutenkhamen's Tracksuit: The History of Sport in 100ish Objects'

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