Room 101: Phil Maynard – Coventry Director of Rugby

1. Foreign Call Centres
Heaven forbid if anything you’ve recently purchased from the shops goes wrong and you need to contact someone in the customer service department to sort it out. For some strange reason most companies opt to base this arm of their operation overseas. My Brummie accent is hard to understand for people in this country at the best of times, let alone some poor sod on the other side of the world in India, for example. Stray from their script and the people answering the phones are completely lost. It normally takes about half an hour for either of us to make out what is going on, by which time everyone has reached exasperation point. Bear in mind, all this is after spending another half an hour going through the myriad of options to try and speak to someone in the first place. Press 1 if you’re annoyed, Press 2 if you’re fed up of waiting etc. etc. and, if I can make suggestion, Press 3 to change the bloody music!
TRP verdict:  You’re right, being put through to ‘Call-cutta’ is a nightmare.
2. Discrepancy of funding
When Coventry were relegated from the Championship to National One our central funding went from close to £300,000 to around £7,000 almost overnight. I don’t think the powers-that-be understand the effects of this; it can be almost terminal, in Coventry’s case it so nearly was. To compare (no, not in an annoying operatic website way), the budgets of clubs at the equivalent level in France, like Lille and St Etienne, receive around £1-2 million. Luckily we get good support at Coventry so the money we make through the gate is much higher than a lot of clubs in our division, but it’s still a real struggle to make ends meet.
TRP verdict:  You’re on the money again, even if your club isn’t. 
3. Footballers’ behaviour
As a game, I’ve got nothing against football: it’s a simple and great game to watch – unless you’re a lifelong Aston Villa fan like me! I just can’t be doing with the on-field behaviour of the cossetted players who spit and swear and throw handbags at dawn. How they can be perceived as role models for aspiring young players is beyond me. What’s even more irritating is the media obsession with football– hundreds and hundreds of column inches and hours and hours of radio and TV air-time are devoted to the sport, plus the fact that people will still pay an absolute fortune to go and watch.
TRP verdict:  You can Villa Park yourself in Room 101; that’s the hat-trick!