Cod Almighty | Diary

Spot the Bill

16 January 2019

In the days before the internet, Thunderdiary would get the next week’s football fixtures on a Thursday, nine days before. Well actually it was my dad, cos he played the pools and when he got the next week’s coupon, there were the fixtures.

The pools were a ubiquitous part of football, with one in three adults playing every week. For those of you not familiar with the game, you had to pick 8 draws from the Saturday fixtures – all of them 3pm kick-offs – in the hope of winning the jackpot.

There was even an additional spot the ball – one week it was an actual picture of a Town game that I recognised from one of those dead good books from the 80s and so knew where the ball was. Convinced I was going to win a Ford Coupe, I was devastated to learn that the ball was where a ‘panel of experts’ thought it was. Cue my Jimmy Hill face.

These days, the Pools are no more and we are instead surrounded by instant gambling on football. Literally anything can be bet on, from Town scoring 5 at Lincoln on Saturday (150-1) to Town winning the league (a Leicester-sized 5000-1) and everything in-between.

There's wagers on throw ins, yellow cards, the colour of the ref’s underpants – everything. And you know what, a harmless bet never hurt anyone – my weekly £1 accumulator will surely come in one day.

But the way that football has become synonymous with gambling is concerning. 26 of the 44 first and second division clubs have a shirt sponsor linked to betting. TV adverts bookend the match winking at you and beckoning you to agree that it "matters more when there's money on it".

Gambling addiction is a serious issue and the tap of a phone is just so damn easy to do – and not so easy to control. All of these companies are from overseas or registered abroad. They contribute nothing to the economy, unlike the pools which earned the Government 40 per cent in tax.

Indeed, a percentage of pools money did go to grassroots football, enabling people to play the game as well as potentially win their fortune. Do these multi-national gambling conglomerates want to contribute some sizeable tax? Develop the footballers of tomorrow? I wouldn’t bet on it.