Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 30 November 2012

30 November 2012

Mardy Diary writes: The other week, with little better to do, I decided to take a look at my Facebook account and there in the middle of my 'stream' was a small poll about sport. Now, it had appeared there because one of the few friends I have (who might now get ditched) had obviously voted on it.

The poll, conducted by Virgin Media, asked people to vote for the sport they enjoyed watching the most, with the initial options being boxing and cricket. Nothing untoward there. However, my ire was stoked by the other two options on the list: firstly, one option was "formula one" - a classification of a sport otherwise known as motor sport. I let that lie, gave a tut and read on. So what was the final option? Yup. You're already there: "Premier League". Not football. Premier League.

This didn't really cause a problem for me - to be honest I was never going to partake in the bollocksing survey in the first place. It just irked me that it was invading my space with its despicable disregard for the national sport. THE national sport. Shut up rugby.

However, it wasn't all bad news in that it gave me an idea for how we can improve the game. Back in the 1870s the rules for the current code of association football were laid down by the then relatively new FA - largely based on the Sheffield rules but with less fighting and death. The rugby lot didn't like the fact that you were no longer allowed to carry the ball or kick people so went off and formed their own code of football.

Since then, (association) football has remained fairly static, with no further division in codes or clubs having a huff and taking their ball home. Not so with rugby, which a couple of decades later had another north/south huffy split into union and league.

So, basically, my thinking was that the game of footy is well overdue another split in code. And given that the likes of Virgin Media are so keen to introduce "Premier League" as a sport, why not let them have their way? We'll continue with association football and they can bugger off and have their own code of the sport which they can call Premier League. Ours will be the familiar passing the ball about, scoring goals and cheering stuff. They can have the punditry, corruption, plastic fans, goal music, spit-roasting, overpriced lager, unsustainable wage budgets and all that shite.

Another bonus to this, of course, is that they will have to form their own national team. We'd still field a team in the World Cup, but they'd have to form their own international tournament. They would be world champions for the first ten years as they'd be the only team in the world playing that sport. But it would only be a matter of time before other countries joined the code and they were back to half-arsed millionaires struggling to beat Estonia, or whoever. Sure, our England may initially be weaker than other countries in international tournaments but... no, hang on, that's what happens already anyway.

So there we go: a way to clean up football for the medium term. Oh, and Virgin Media can fuck off too. Seeya.