A CREEPING MALAISE ?

The photo above shows a selection of Chelsea players wearing the now obligatory message-bearing tee shirts, limbering up before their game at Villa Park on Saturday.  Of itself it represents a sympathetic statement of Chelsea`s best wishes to Aston Villa captain, Stillyan Petrov, as he begins his battle with leukemia.   And who could argue with that?

Meanwhile, at Celtic Park, where Petrov played with distinction for a number of years, there were messages from the crowd, a minute`s applause and other forms of good wishes to Petrov as he begins the long road to a hopeful full recovery.   Even FIFA Prersident Sepp Blatter has tweeted his personal good wishes and I`m sure that similar outpourings of goodwill were on show at other grounds around the country.

A couple of weeks ago, we had the unnerving collapse of Bolton midfielder, Fabrice Muamba in a game against Tottenham at White Hart Lane.   Given the circumstances, the game was abandoned and replayed last week and all those responsible at White Hart Lane were rightly commended for the manner in which they dealt with a genuine emergency.  We again saw the obligatory tee shirts and an outpouring of emotional hoping and praying for Muamba`s full recovery which, thankfully, appears to be going well.

But what has struck me about these and other similar incidents is that we are, as a nation, suffering from the creeping malaise which divides those like me who cling ever hopefully to the traditional British virtues of restraint, reserve and resilience;   from those who react to such incidents with sentiment and self indulgence, for whom no tragedy is so small that they cannot resist making it all about them, rather than the victim of the circumstances.

Now of course I hope that Fabrice Muamba, Stillyan Petrov  and their friends and families can come through these troubled times for them and secure a full recovery from these dreadful events.   But there are countless thousands out there who are in the same situation and I see no tee shirts and hear no minute`s applause for them. I should know - I`ve got a funeral of a good friend to endure on Thursday.  


But those countless thousands should know that they too have the best wishes of those of a quieter and more restrained disposition, whilst the more self-indulgent merely await the next opportunity to be part of the drama.