SBS once hit the mark with its football coverage but its new show does not deliver on humour or insight

I'm often told by people, real and on the internet, that I need to lighten up. It's true that my cynicism extends to a frighteningly wide range of subjects. At least I am democratic with my criticisms. Thursday FC, SBS's new live weekly entertainment program, added to my ever-growing list.

This won't be a popular view. There is nothing football fans in this country like more than a bit of self-congratulation and mutual backslapping. Any coverage of the A-League is good coverage. We'd applaud Robert Mugabe if he used the #wearefootball hashtag.

Before we get to what's wrong with Thursday FC, let's start with what is right. It won't take long.

It is nice to have football back on free-to-air television. Thursday FC forms part of a new-look football package on SBS2, built around a Friday night telecast of one A-League game. That's something. Not all of us wage-slaves can afford to penetrate Murdoch's paywalls. A Foxtel package doesn't come cheap, and even though there's football on there, everything else is a terrible waste of time and money. There are only so many reruns of Becker and National Geographic shark documentaries one can watch.

The concept for Thursday FC isn't all that bad. An edgy, fresh take on football with a bit of live music is a necessary addition to the trainwreck that is Australian sports broadcasting. The A-League's main demographic is young Australians, and if there's one thing young people like, its larfs, tunes and sport. And being treated like they have the mental capacity of a happy clapping seal.

Lucy Zelic is a natural on camera. Her pronunciation of European names will surely make Les Murray proud, and harks back to those sepia-toned days when the directors at SBS actually gave a toss about their own charter. I still miss Mariana Rudan, but Zelic performed admirably nonetheless. Why not go for a double female presence?

The Roy Lichtenstein-esque pop art aesthetic is a nice touch. Never mind that David Zdrilic thinks Roy Lichtenstein is a holding midfielder for CSKA Moscow and pop art is breakfast, those graphics are rather easy on the eye.

Also, there's not much else on the box on a Thursday night. On SBS1, there was a cooking show. On Channel 10, there was Revealed, with Hugh Riminton, which is a politics program that sounds like a sex show. Beauty and the Geek. Survivor. In that regard, Thursday FC Steve Bradburys into top spot for this particular weeknight's viewing.

That said, the show, overall, is a gargantuan disappointment. It's an hour of over-enthusiastic football fans laughing at over-enthusiastic presenters cracking barely-there jokes in an over-enthusiastic fashion.

In fairness, it is hard to be funny – and TV shows such as this often need time to bed in. Even harder to be funnier on stage. Even harder still to be funny on stage in front of cameras, bright lights and a live audience. Presumably that's why SBS hired comedian Matt Okine as host, but regrettably he spends most of the evening looking as if he was going to explode with nervous energy, in between pulling strange faces at the camera when he's not in full gush.

The in-house band, Cartoon, is to pop rock what Australian rapper 360 is to hip hop. Safe. Comfortable. Soul destroying. Last night's guest band, Evermore, should be forced back into whatever hole they've been hiding in for the past few years.

When guest Nick Giannopoulos stood up in the first episode and imitated a school yard wog boy, yelling "poofta refareee!" every football fan in the country got the reference, while Okine looked more uncomfortable than if he'd spewed on Ken Shipp's shoes after a big night out drinking kahlua and milk.

SBS is known as the station that accepts and invites cultural diversity and difference. Except of course, if you use the word 'soccer'. Now, I prefer the word 'football' as much as the next born-again round-ball evangelical, but a studio audience howling down the Harlem Globetrotters for calling the game 'soccer' during the first episode had to be seen to be believed.

The only decent segment in last night's program was the interview with Simon Harsent, who has taken some lovely snaps of football grounds for his latest photo exhibition, The Beautiful Game. But he got about as much airtime as Mike 'Mr Cricket' Hussey to promote his book, Under the Southern Cross, the worst title for a book since Bob Katter's An Incredible Race of People.

Sadly, SBS's football coverage, like much of their content, reminds me of that guy you used to be friends with in high school. After graduation, you drifted apart as new friends were made and the hangers-on went through the great tea strainer of life. These days, you run into him at family parties and school reunions, but it's not the same.

This guy used to be cool in a daggy, unnerving kind of way. His politics were good. He believed in things. His bullshit radar was finely tuned. He didn't need to shout about his own importance. It was self-evident. He might have been a bit unusual, but at least you could trust him. He taught you things, and he was always on the ball.

Now, his politics have been reduced to sloganeering, he folds his ochre-brown chinos up at the ankle, wears plunging v-neck man cleavage shirts and sports one of those silly baseball caps with the sticker still on the underside of the flat-brim. He has lots of cool new friends that are painfully enthusiastic, energetic and hip. In pandering to trends, you're left wondering whether all the tattoo ink he's absorbed over the years has infected his soul irreparably. Also, he's way too excited to see you, and always wants to try and engage in the stop and chat.

The worst part is that SBS have churned through some red-hot talent to get to this. That wonderful lunatic Damien Lovelock, a former frontman for pub-punk band The Celibate Rifles, used to host a nice little segment on The World Game called Fans' Corner. Sam, Santo and Ed's World Cup Fever during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa struck a careful balance between funny and football.

But while Damo's back touring with the Celibate Rifles, Santo, Sam and Ed have since migrated behind Murdoch's paywall, taking their routine to Fox Sports. Splitters.

As the late great Johnny Warren once said, SBS has been Australia's best coach. Its Friday night telecasts still have some of the old magic, but Thursday's offering was a football lobotomy. Regardless, Thursday FC will be a hit with audiences. It wasn't long before the Thursday FC hashtag started trending on Twitter in Australia, and like a pack of deprived addicts, we were soon high off our football fix.

Thursday FC is a metaphor for what's wrong with football in this country. The show is a substandard product, especially compared with Sam, Santo and Ed's Total Football on Monday night. Yet everybody accepts Thursday FC because it looks and feels something like the game we love. We'd prefer the pure stuff, but most of us can't afford it and since demand outstrips supply, we end up scrambling over the crack cocaine.