Sport Jim White

SPORT JIM WHITE ENGLISH FOOTBALL

Rock bottom. It is a favoured phrase of sports journalism, one used to suggest serial humiliation. British tennis has been there, English cricket is a frequent visitor, England rugby took a trip to its darker recesses during its own recent World Cup.

But it is the English football team that most frequently draws the expression. England hit ‘rock bottom’ when they failed to qualify out of their group at the last World Cup, struck ‘rock bottom’ when they lost to a nation with a smaller population than Croydon in the Euros and then sank once more to ‘rock bottom’ as their coach resigned after just one match in charge. As Alan Shearer put it: how much more rock bottom can you get?

Except the problem with rock bottom is that the phrase implies this is the end of the line. It offers the tantalising suggestion that from here on in, to quote D:ream, things can only get better. Unfortunately the gathering roll-call of dishonour exposed by the press suggests the nadir is a very long way from being reached. English football is on the most precipitous downward spiral, propelled by an institutionalised lust for the folding stuff.

Sam Allardyce was no one-off. He was but a symptom of how the game has been tarnished beyond repair by the cash swilling around within it. Here he was, spouting PR guff on his appointment as England manager back in July about how this was the job he had always craved, about the responsibilities it carried, about its meaning and scale. And yet within moments of signing his contract he was exploring ways to monetise the position, his people talking telephone numbers about the delivery of keynote speeches before moving on to the issue of how he might help them steer around his employer’s own rules and regulations. For a nice little earner, of course. You might have thought paying someone £3 million might eradicate any need for extracurricular income. Not in football. Not in a game drowning in money, its soul long ago sold to the highest bidder.

Here is the basis of the problem: in England we are in possession of financially the hottest property in world sport. The Premier League is sold around the globe for phenomenal returns. Even the most lowly club in the division is now paid £100 million a year from the broadcast booty. And, as Far Eastern investors seek to get involved (the Chinese now own three senior clubs in the West Midlands alone), so the parasites have gathered, seeking their share of the cut. What they are after is cash. Last year enough money to build a floodlit all-weather football pitch in 250 schools was paid to agents to help them fund Ferrari lifestyles. Meanwhile, children find it increasingly hard to play the game as facilities wither as local authority budgets are relentlessly squeezed. Once players and fans shared the same bus to the game. Now the disconnect between those at the top and those whose enthusiasm nurtures them has never been wider.

And how the rest of world football chortles at English discomfort. The Football Association pompously lectures the world game’s governing bodies about corruption while its own principal employee is negotiating a price for his own treachery, driven by an anxiety to make sure some of the money swirling round the game heads in his direction.

But nobody should be surprised the organisation hasn’t a clue about what is going on under its very nose. The essential problem about the game in this country is the regulatory body does not have the power. That belongs where the money is, with the Premier League. Without the resources to examine its own processes, the FA is obliged to leave the investigation to the fourth estate. Only when the media publish their revelations does the body act. English football is governed by an organisation that is reactive, rather than pro-active.

And until that issue is addressed, the woeful swirl of venality will only get worse. One thing we can be certain of with English football: we have not reached rock bottom. There is still a long, long way to go.

MOTORING ALAN JUDD THE 70-PLUS LICENCE

One of the joys of approaching seventy is the letter from the DVLA telling you your driving licence will expire on your birthday and that you should apply for a new one. This new one will last only three years and to get it you need to assure the DVLA that you are in a fit state to drive. You don’t need to get your doctor or optician to verify it and you can do it all online.

Unless, that is, you want to retain the right to drive all the categories of vehicle for which your current licence qualifies you. Being of that certain age and having passed my driving test in about 1964, I am qualified to drive – in addition to cars, vans, tractors etc – medium-sized lorries up to 7.5 tonnes and minibuses of up to sixteen seats, plus trailers. (It was even better for my father who was taught to drive in the Army in the Second World War, never took a test and was qualified to drive anything that moved on wheels across the surface of the earth.) I was about to complete my online application when I noticed that doing so would remove those two categories from my licence. I could keep them only by obtaining forms for my optician and doctor to sign and then applying by post.

Thus, we are encouraged not to bother. I rarely drive lorries or minibuses of that size but I like lorries and would like to have one. Someone has offered me his restored 1960s BMC with tipping back and winch. I have no use for it but that’s beside the point for auto-addicts. I also hanker after the Bedford RL army lorries of the 1950s, high, splendidly uncompromising snub-nosed beasts with four-wheel drive and about 9–12mpg (petrol). I shall probably never get either but I didn’t want to sign away my right, so I opted for renewing the laborious way.

The optician’s form was no problem, especially as I’d had a (free) eye test the day before. The doctor’s form, however, was detailed and, though I could have answered most of the questions myself (pertaining to various conditions I’d happily never heard of), I had to make an appointment because the doctor needed to certify my blood pressure that day. It appears to be the same form as if I were applying for an HGV licence.

I next discovered that twenty minutes had to be allowed for completing the form, which counted as two GP appointments of ten minutes each for which I should have to pay £52. Well, at this point most sensible people do what the DVLA wants them to do – give up, renounce the unnecessary categories, renew online. But, perversely, this insistence on making me pay for being old incensed me even more, and I coughed up. Since I’d recently seen the doctor for a check-up anyway, it took him only a few minutes to earn his £52.

Of course, we oldies get many free benefits which I for one shamelessly accept. But I wouldn’t insist that we ought all to have them all. Indeed, I believe that the hallowed principle of an NHS free at the point of entry increases its growing unsustainability and that we’d do better to emulate other countries with contributory systems and better health outcomes.

So I don’t really object to paying the doctor to complete my form – it was my choice, after all. But what I do object to is that it’s effectively an ageist stealth tax in which the Government charges you for continuing to do what you’ve hitherto done without charge, and without the Government admitting it. Still, as my grandmother was forever saying, there’s worse troubles at sea.