Shall we move on from football?

Seriously, perhaps it's time to collectively decide to support an different game.

Most of the top players are repellent creatures, jumping from prostitute to prostitute in between greedy deals with dubious agents. Occasionally they break off from negotiations to record tasteless and grasping advertisements. Every so often they might play a game of football if their media appearances allow.

The club owners, when they aren't porn barons, are evil corporate entities with no interest in the game or the communities which founded and nurtured the clubs for generations.

Ticket prices are becoming ridiculous, and watching on pay-TV is prohibitively expensive too. Being a supporter is now little more than acting as a piggy bank, one with no right to express an opinion and no respect from clubs, players or the media.

Managers are becoming monsters, yet are afforded slavish respect by people posing as journalists on more and more pages of the newspapers. TV commentating is reserved for the partisan, the boring and the smug.

Most of the clubs are effectively, or nearly, bankrupt. They're operating on the same economic model as all the investment banks which have recently destroyed our economies. Some of them (Liverpool, Manchester and others) are in debt because they owe their owners the money said owners borrowed to buy said club. Eh?

FIFA is corrupt from top to bottom: both the individuals running the game and the organisation itself (World Cup profit $1.7bn, tax free: money spent on developing football in Africa: $70m: new FIFA offices: $200m).

So - to which sport shall we turn? I'm quite keen on fencing, but if it's violent, fast outside sport you want, how about (Gaelic) football, Hurling (both massive in Ireland and still amateur), or Aussie Rules?







In sum, the game's rotten to the core, especially at the top level.

Books, sweet, sweet books

The five day book drought's over. Emma presented me with a sports book that even Ewarwoowar won't have read - Michéal O'Muircheartaigh's bilingual memoir of Ireland and being GAA's most famous commentator.

Also, I called into The Works today and accidentally bought five of the six special Bill Amberg designed Penguin Classics special editions, in soft loose leather with a box (The Great Gatsby, A Room With A View, Brideshead Revisited, The Big Sleep and A Picture of Dorian Gray). They're absolutely beautiful and a snip at £6.99 instead of £50. I just need Breakfast at Tiffany's to complete the decadent set.

Olé olé olé olé - Irish style

Also on an Irish theme, I see that Real Madrid (Ronaldo - £150,000 per week) managed to scrape past Shamrock Rovers (highest paid player - £850 per week) by one goal to nil, which is pretty shameful. Ronaldo received a couple of knocks and got a few sly kicks in himself, which is very unlike his usual style of play.

He'd better toughen up if, as this picture shows, he's considering a change to hurling.

Irish eyes aren't smiling

So Ireland go out to New Zealand, comprehensively beaten - but then very few of Ireland's team are professional cricketers (or Irish, come to think of it). It was fun mixing it with the big boys though, and getting further than Australia in a sport a long way down the national pecking order (football, hurling, rugby, soccer, horse-racing, golf - yuck) is very funny.

I'm still not convinced by Twenty20 - it's the equivalent of table football. Give me the slow, thoughtful strategy of a Test match, occasionally enlivened by a wicked spell of fast bowling or the deviousness of a good spinner.