I see that the powers that be who run football are about to meet to consider a number of proposals deigned to improve `the match day experience.`   These include extending the half time break from the maximum allowed at the moment of 15 minutes to half an hour.   This is so that the half time `entertainment` for paying customers can have extravaganzas such as musical turns and other japes  ( and allow the customers to spend even more in the retail `concourses` I suspect.)

Back in the day when I plied my amateur trade as a box-to-box midfield dynamo with a good engine and an eye for a pass for Maidstone Dolphins in Division 3B of the Maidstone and District Saturday League, things were a little different.   Our home games were played in places such as Mangravet or Park Wood with changing rooms not best equipped to deter would be malcontents and so our first duty at half time was to ensure that our paltry belongings were still in one piece.  Each of us then managed to suck half an orange and have a cigarette before emerging for the second half and it occurs to me that if FIFA`s expected ruling on extending the half time break had been around in those far off days then we might have managed a whole orange and perhaps two cigarettes.