SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER..

At the start of the `summer` I was looking forward to a memorable sporting period with the European Football Championships, the summer game of cricket, Wimbledon, the Olympics and all the other events that go to make for a good time.   But it seems to be going all wrong.

I suppose it started with the European football which the Spanish won at a canter and it got me wondering why we can`t play football like that - after all, we invented the game - and then I thought of Terry, Rooney, Cole and the rest of England`s finest.....and I stopped wondering.

Along came Wimbledon and I hoped rather innocently that this annual shindig might at last throw off just a little of its traditional fixation with privilege and entitlement and allow just a little more egalitarian light to shine through its marbled halls, its ivy clad walls and its shiny new roof.   No chance.   Once again we were treated to the unedifying spectacle of thousands of `ordinary punters` queuing overnight for the chance to spend £40 just to sit on a mud-caked windswept hill and watch the action on a big screen, leaving the rich, the famous, the infamous, the pampered and the celebrity chancers to somehow manage to get the best seats for the best games.   All of which made me rather pleased that Murray disappointed them all.   Like Murray himself, Wimbledon needs to man up.

In a couple of weeks, we`ll have the Olympics.   I should be excited about that but what ruins it before it even begins are things like the Torch relay with its smattering of `celebrities` and sponsorship`s `guest torch bearers`;   the chaos to be inflicted on travel arrangements (I`m hoping to get to London on 25th July for an important event quite unconnected with the Olympics and already the task is daunting me);   the dead hand once more of corporate sponsorship by such paragons of healthy lifestyles as Coca~Cola and MacDonald's - to the point where you will not be allowed to take any food or drink into the Olympic venues but have to purchase stuff produced by those multi-national companies;   and once again the privileges dished out to the chosen few (as laughingly exemplified by the crassly expensive decision to remove speed bumps and reinstate them after their limousines have made their way to and from the appointed venues.)

You see, it`s not always the sports themselves that are depressing, far from it, it`s more often all the stuff that goes on around them that brings on the summer doldrums; and one of the real tragedies for me is that the one true summer joy of watching cricket is pushed into the background.   It tries hard to compete but is reduced to a bit part player in this summer of excess.   


As for me personally, it makes me wonder whether, following Southampton`s promotion to the Premier League - the self-acclaimed `best league in the world` - I`m not at all sure I can face becoming merely a `customer` having a match day experience in a results-driven commercially competitive business, rather than just a supporter.  


What began as a summer of rich promise is turning into one of disillusion as the whole sporting world seems to be just a commercial jungle, a sponsorship ridden razzmatazz where sporting integrity and traditional loyalties come a poor second to chasing the dollar......and I`m not sure I want any part of that.   I guess I should have known better.