Wheatsheaf, Southwark

Drunk in here a number of times as it's near work, and the closest place showing sport - this review is not a critique of the bar's beer, but it's sport policy.

On Saturday afternoon I was nicely settled in to the Heineken Cup semi final between Saracens vs Clermont - one of the biggest club rugby matches of the season, in continental competition, and involving a London club. As the game was heading towards its final 10 minutes the screen went on to the Sky TV guide and, to my horror, the pixels switched to images of a besuited, adulterous, super-injunction invoking toerag taking his place in the redbrick Old Trafford dugout.

Such was the shock that a rugby-loving terrier scampered free from its leash, running amok through the bar yapping and yelping. This courageous act of complaint saw the man's game almost immediately returned to the screen, for what I hoped would be the concluding 10 minutes of a superb Heineken tie.

It was not to be. As the seconds ticked by, the gaggle of that most unbecoming breed, the southern United fan, was growing around the bar staff as if they were footballers who've had a refereeing decision go against them. These armchair United fans, taking a brief pause from stories of how their dad slept with a Manc girl once so they're really not glory hunters at all, started to crank up the pressure on the bar staff to change channels. Missing the pregame clips of Ray Winstone advocating gambling and commentators' inane platitudes about the aforementioned adulterous toerag, was clearly more than they could take.

At this point, to the enduring and lasting shame of The Sheaf, the bar staff caved to the pressure. They sacrificed any remaining honour and professionalism, an attitude of seeing the job through to the end, just to placate the throng of FHM readers whining over the bar. They switched off an important European rugby match involving a London club, and replaced it with a mediocre mid-table Premiership team from the North playing a dead rubber football match against... bloody Norwich.

The moral of this tale: if you believe in honour and integrity, boycott The Sheaf, for it has none.

27 Apr 2014 19:16