FA SHOULD BASH BRAZEN BOOKIES
WAYNE SHAW, the former Sutton United goalkeeper, has been charged with breaching FA rules over his pie-eating escapade during the FA Cup tie with Arsenal. Shaw has already lost his job and now faces further sanction. He really has been the patsy in all of this. What is inescapable, though, is that a fledgling betting company — Sun Bets — hungry for publicity, messed with the circumstances around a football match in a way that was wholly self-serving. That Shaw had to be seen to eat the pie on television for the bet to come in is evidence enough of that. This explains why he stepped outside the home dug-out to commit the act — and why he sourced the pie at half-time, when he should have been in the dressing room listening to his manager, because the score was only 1-0 and he could have been called upon. Charging Shaw is real butterfly-on-a-wheel stuff, but if it stops dubious novelty bets, and bookmakers who see sport as a vehicle to promote their interests, it won’t have been the FA’s worst work. LEWES are the first professional or semiprofessional football club to afford equal pay to their men’s and women’s teams.
‘we believe there should be a level playing field,’ said Jacquie Agnew, a club director. ‘we hope to spark a change across the UK that will put an end to the excuses for such a deep pay disparity.’
Of course, it helps when the men’s team draw crowds of 474 and play in the Isthmian League.
Matching that has limited fiscal impact. For a serious professional club, Liverpool for instance, to offer wage parity between sadio Mane and sophie Ingle would be a shortcut to financial ruination. This is not an ‘excuse’, but an economic fact.
Liverpool’s women drew crowds of 724 on average last season. How could they possibly get wage parity with a men’s team that generates hundreds of millions? The men at Lewes will be paid in washers by comparison. Gender equality around the minimum wage is not so hard to achieve. ANDY MURRAY could barely score a point in his final two sets with Sam Querrey, but it was different when a reporter remarked that his opponent was the first American to reach a Grand Slam semi-final since 2009. ‘Male player,’ Murray corrected. Well, of course male player. As the singles events are separate for male and female, it is absolutely implicit in the question that it is men’s tennis being discussed. Just as it was in 2015 when Novak Djokovic won the US Open and a certain British tennis player tweeted: ‘Congrats to Novak on his tenth Grand Slam. Now the third player in this era to reach double digits. Incredible.’ Indeed it was. Djokovic joined Roger Federer, at the time on 17, and Rafael Nadal, then on 14. Yet Serena Williams, very much of this era, had 21 singles titles when Murray tweeted. She was omitted because he was referring to men’s tennis and, like the reporter, considered this fact implied; as it was. ALEXIS SANCHEZ says his dream is to play in the champions League, and win. The threat is plain. He cannot do so at Arsenal and wishes to leave. Yet sanchez has had the chance to play in, and win, the champions League pretty much his whole career.
He spent three years at Barcelona, but couldn’t get in the team and was eventually sold, leading to three years at Arsenal, each season in the champions League and eliminated at the first knockout stage.
who can forget sanchez’s disgruntled body language as Arsenal sunk to another defeat against Bayern Munich last season? would he win the champions League if he left? He would need to show greater commitment to the cause than that.