Are smartphones eroding the experience of watching football?

Phones make everything easier but they have bred impatience and diluted the escapism of going to games

By Nutmeg magazine

In November 1980, I was 13 and making my way to Firhill from East Kilbride alone, arriving at the game to discover there was no manager in the dugout. It seemed very strange but, as I went on my own and was too shy to speak to anyone while I was there, it wasn't until the next day that I found out via the Sunday Mail that Bertie Auld had resigned and gone to Hibs.

The news was devastating. Bertie was my first manager, in charge for all the years I'd been a supporter, all of them in the Premier League. Now he'd gone and nobody had told me.