The loss of my beautiful game

Long long ago I fell in love with football, we played in the street, we played in the school yard, I was really crap and never scored a goal but I loved it. Living in Merthyr there was a dearth of opportunity to watch top class teams; Cardiff was the nearest club, in the Second Division at that time, and always in Europe as the club invariably won the Welsh Cup which qualified them for the European Cup Winners Cup.

I stared going to watch Merthyr Tydfil (FC) then in the Southern League Premier Division I learned what it was like to win and to lose. Merthyr was going nowhere but they were my team.

Sometimes I, with friends, would go to Cardiff, it was easier to get to Cardiff than it was to Swansea, who were in a lower division at the time, and so my love affair with football grew.

Going to college in Liverpool I regularly attended Anfield, never comfortable in the swaying kop of the mid 70’s I watched a Liverpool team, at the beginning of its dominant phase of English football, from the Anfield Road end of the ground, and so my love affair with football grew.

Fast Forward ........... to now and what has happened to that love affair.

This season Cardiff were relegated from the Premier League, they had only been in it one season, the Manager and the Chair fell out and the Manager got sacked, fans were unhappy because the owner changed the colour the team played in from blue to red and they got paid £62 million from television rights, for coming last. The top payment to Liverpool, just over £97 million and even Manchester United, who had a really bad season received  £89 million.

I work with groups that are looking for thousands to run community sports programmes, play schemes and coaching programmes.

I watch community coaches’ work with children in a park on a rainy day because they believe in giving something back to the community. These people are not alone there are hundreds, thousands, of such people throughout the country that give their time to work with and develop youngsters.

These groups, these individuals scramble around for funds, competing with all the others for a diminishing public and charitable purse.

Footballers earning over £200k per week, teams that come last being paid £62 million and ticket prices  of £50+ per game. These ‘important issues’ fill our newspaper, consume our Saturdays, spawn a myriad of television programmes and celebrity punters, all for the beautiful game I fell in love with as a boy, but out of love with as a man.

Oh yes and every now and then, VERY rarely, television produces a ‘community interest’ item celebrating the people I now go and watch, and work with, in the park on Saturday; instead of watching, what I still believe to be a beautiful game, made ugly by losing its relevance to me.