Football fever can bring everybody together

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the East Kilbride News.

It’s almost time – tomorrow sees the World Cup kick-off in Russia with the hosts taking on Saudi Arabia in the opening match at 4pm.

Wall-to-wall football will be some people’s worst nightmare, granted, but for a huge number of people, it is the stuff dreams are made of.

I’ll be tuning in although my chances of enjoying every kick of ‘Super Saturday’ with four games scheduled between 11am and 10pm are miniscule as my wife and young daughter would no doubt have something to say!

The once-every-four-years event is a global spectacular with history made, magic moments savoured and legends created.

It is appointment-to-view telly and it is such a shame Scotland are not part of it all; we have not been at a national finals since 1998.

The power of sport cannot be underestimated and while there are, of course, plenty more important issues happening in the world, it will do us all good to enjoy this feast of football together and forget about the world’s woes, even if it is just for 90 minutes.

I remember back to the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

People had smiles on their faces and enjoyed the sense of occasion. Here’s hoping we can get a flavour of that over the coming weeks.

To that end, you can keep track of the progress of the tournament with our fantastic World Cup wallchart which makes up our centre spread.

Also, don’t miss our EK, East Kilbride £50 gift card competition on page 16 and Di Maggio’s £50 gift voucher competition on page 32.