IT is rare for me to agree with Kevin McKenna (no relation) but his article on football was excellent (“Deep-rooted loyalty has been betrayed by greed and banality”, The Herald, February 25). I find football today boring in the extreme and the false excitement created by video editors’ quick splicing of “action” from games with their shouting commentators followed by airhead pundits off-putting. However, I have many friends who do still pay to see football, and I do not see why those who enjoy the game should be fleeced and manipulated at every turn.
It is disturbing to watch hard-working men and women parting with hard-won cash for over-priced streamed live TV, a plethora of shoddy new strips, dubious betting opportunities, extortionate game ticket prices, and all to pay some overpriced players whose talent or lack of it I am happily in no position to judge.
No other sport gets away with such largesse to those it favours be they pundits, players or owners. No other sport causes so much weekly disruption around it in traffic chaos, domestic violence, sectarianism, debt through online betting, questionable business practices, organisational scandals and acres of useless newsprint speculating or commenting on nothing much at all.
Football is a sport enjoyed by a minority of people but that minority is plucked and wrung out by a preening self-serving elite, who with the collusion of the media try to create new addicts every day, usually amongst those who can least afford to be plucked.
The minority who watch football is declining as it fails to compete or hold the attention of other more entertaining, reasonably priced, family orientated pursuits and on current tactics, it deserves to fail.
John McKenna,
25 Fairlie, Stewartfield, East Kilbride.
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