Not so beautiful game

hoW hypocritical of the FA to ban burnley’s Joey barton for 18 months and fine him £30,000 for placing more than 1,000 bets on football. some of these bets were placed years ago.

You can walk past any betting shop on any high street and see professional sportspeople, including Premier League footballers, advertising gambling.

The head of the Professional Footballers’ Association has allegedly been in debt for gambling and kept his position despite that.

one law for barton and another for the head of the PFA, it seems.

maRy Scot, Burnley, lancs. hAVING employed both professional footballers and professional snooker players in my capacity as a snooker centre operator for 40 years, it is painfully obvious to me that these boys should get their parents’ permission before they leave the house.

They are far too easily led, with stacks of money in their back pockets. some of the management teams that look after their interests are only interested in taking care of these cash cows’ money, not their physical and mental well-being.

The wages of sin, in the form of huge sponsorship and branding from betting firms, are gobbled up by both sports. Yet you then get the absurd situation whereby a footballer or a snooker player is hauled before the respective disciplinary board for having a bet. how on earth is that either fair or moral?

Are the various bodies that govern these sports, such as the FA, saying that if a car company sponsored an event, the players couldn’t buy that particular car? or if a pie company sponsored an event the players couldn’t eat any of those pies?

If these hypocritical associations consider their members associating with betting companies to be wrong, why don’t they set an example and refuse these companies’ coinage?

These sportsmen are role models for our children. Gambling sponsorship of sporting events, like smoking sponsorship, must be driven out of these sports, along with the gambling adverts shown during such events.

StePHen DaWSon, Bury, lancs.