Hugs everyone, and here is your prize

They had a phone in today on BBC Radio 5 Live. It was about sport and what we might need to do to improve our standing on the world stage. Much of it was based around funding, the lack of funding, self belief, something about Empire (when what they actually meant was shared history) and the like. I wasn’t particularly interested in most of it.

Then one man phoned in with his perspective on where the system is failing his young lad who is a bit keen on football. Apparently, and I am as shocked at this as you are likely to be, when playing organised football at school the kids are instructed not to make any tackles. The fear is that the school will face a legal challenge for compensation if someone gets hurt.

Effectively they are not playing football. They seem to have invented an entirely new game. It comes as no great surprise that it’s not exactly conducive to creating a generation of world beaters. Particularly when no-one else in the world plays that particular game.