Sport should be affordable for all of us to enjoy

WHAT a wonderful display of the power of a unified, collective public voice we had last week.

What a pity it took a threatened sport to produce it.

As far as football is concerned it’s about time!

Nearly 40 years ago, the process began with business taking over and fans became a giant pocket to continually pick.

This was the decade when unfettered capitalism and greed became the norm.

If you ever doubted the power of marketing consider the following examples:

Remember being seduced into paying to watch football on TV when it was already there?

Stadia becoming all-seaters in the wake of preventable tragedies and corporate boxes aplenty?

Ticket prices and merchandise at extortionate rates, and finally obscene wages for the sporting mercenaries feeding an entourage of agents?

I have often thought football as a metaphor or microcosm for the wider world.

When is enough enough? Can greed and power ever be sated? The same is happening with cricket. Only those with money in mind would lack the sensibilities to suggest altering the terminology. It is suggested that simpler terms would help attract fans. What an insult to our intelligence! Let’s have cricket back on terrestrial TV, to attract fans like it always

did.

In fact, let’s have all sport returned to us, rich and poor.

As one protest banner read, ‘made by the poor, stolen by the rich.’

Don’t stop now football fans; do us all a favour and make sport affordable to all.