Is football in a shambles?
Terry's All Gold
What a shambles the game of football is in.Pick up a newspaper and all you read is how many millions such and such a player is getting whilst yet another club is on the verge of extinction with the players going unpaid.It is an utter mad house, but then the gullible supporter seems to love it.The more wealthy a club (and its players) is, the bigger the attendance.
Look at the Lanarkshire scenario.All four clubs are in trouble, one gone altogether, and why?For the simple reason that the locals won't support them.They are slouched in front of the box, quite happy to leave their own club, situated on their own doorstep, and quite happily watch it rot.
The hype of the World Cup was a complete turn-off for me.Flags everywhere, pubs full of gogglers looking at a glass screen with mercenary figures running after a ball, and just to add to the 'fun' they wheeled into the studios a gaggle of over-paid images uttering banalities.The only good thing to come out of the tournament for me was the one and only game I watched, a repeat of England's defeat.For weeks the brainwashing was unrelenting, Beckham and more Beckham; has any one person ever had more publicity than this clown?But then perhaps I don't live in todays world where a shrine has been set up world-wide to worship his image.All these people crowded round television sets during June.Can you believe that at breakfast time, thousands who have never seen a live match congregated round a television set.Surely they should be raring to see their local team in the flesh?Yes, of course I must be joking - they probably don't even know where their local team play.
What can be said of the plight of our own club?All because we tried to chase after you know which two and brought in players to whom we paid silly wages - it almost became the death of The Steel Men.Despite the shock of it it all, some good can come from it.Perhaps instead of going for players from all over the place and offering them money that the club doesn’t have, now maybe our own players can be given a chance as it used to be before all this crazy television money appeared.TV has utterly taken over the game; it has taken the game away from the bread and butter fan.The worst thing to happen as far as I am concerned was the departure of Alan Dick.Alan is a true football man, hard working and knowledgeable, so to lose such a talent was criminal.Another blunder was losing John Philliben, a Motherwell man through and through.
Then of course we were told we had a top manager in place, Eric Black, the man who saved us from relegtion.To me St Johnstone being so poor that they became our saviours averted it.If Black had stayed, our team would have become a French foreign legion, as that seemed to be where his gaze was fixed.HAVE WE THE RIGHT MAN NOW?I wonder this to myself when I read in a paper Terry Butcher telling one of his own players "You are not a true player until you recieve a red card"?!?!!?
He also dismissed 'Well's horrendous crime-count and fine from last season.Even if it is doubled this season it doesn't worry him, as long as we get 'stuck in'.What an attitude.A far cry from the thoughts and actions of Bobby Ancell as a player and manager.It seems that players such as our own George Stevenson, Charlie Aitken, Joe Wark etc, etc were not true players - how times have changed.I know which players I'd pay to watch between the red card merchants or the afore-mentioned Motherwell greats.
Can't the players today play within the laws of the game - it's all petty, childish stuff that masquerades as football today.It's not all confined to the playing field - look at the technical area (who thought that term up?) as the ranting and raving that goes on in that area is like a lunatic asylum.I am in no doubt that these actions transfer onto the pitch.
New season starts, nothing changed.Scottish football attempts to bring in a fairer distribution of wealth but oh no, the sick twosome throw it out.So with the new B.B.C. offer - they're still coming out with most of the dosh as well as being shown on T.V. week in, week out.PASS THE SICK BAG.If we lived in an ideal world, all monies coming into the game would be shared by all in the game and supporters would go and watch their local team - and pigs might fly!Television is the all-mighty king of football.When there was no football on television the game was a sport.Nowadays that word no longer exists, it has been replaced by GREED.How often have we heard this sort of rubbish Hedman came out with when leaving Coventry for Celtic "I am SAD to leave because I have had a great time and will MISS Coventry." and Laursen on heading in the same direction from Hibs "I want to let Hibs know what they WILL ALWAYS MEAN to me." UGH!!!!!!!
Despite everything,
LET'S KEEP SUPPORTING THE 'WELL
Enjoy it all,
Cheers
TERRY WILLOUGHBY
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