Never On!

A long, long time ago there was a popular song called, 'Never on a Sunday' (the song I believe concerned a working girl, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, if you know what I mean). This song had a lot of relevance here in Norn Iron as the Lord's day, or the Sabbath to give it it's proper title, was sacred and practically nothing moved that wasn't religious. Now of course we're in the 21 st century and almost anything goes and in fact it's becoming increasingly hard to tell Sunday from any other day. Okay we still have limited opening times for pubs and supermarkets, but that will surely change with the influx of foreign workers, who have no qualms about working at all times and probably in the next ten years most places will be open 24/7. The one bastion to hold out against this ignoring of the traditional Sunday was in fact the I.F.A. with their 'no football on a Sunday' rule. But we have apparently been told by F.I.F.A. that this rule is illegal and if we want to compete at the highest level, e.g. the World Cup, then we have to abolish the rule and allow football to be played on a Sunday. The I.F.A. after a couple of false starts managed to get this rule rescinded by a large majority last night and it will be law from June 1 next year. Unsurprisingly (well I wasn't surprised anyway), Donegal Celtic and Newry City are proposing to play a Sunday game in January but for what reason I cannot fathom. As it will be the first game of it's kind played here, there may well be a sizable crowd (well by the tiny number of fans these two clubs have, 200 fans would be double their normal crowd), but it's what happens in the long term that's important. If one wants to gauge the impact of Sunday football you only have to look at Derry City. Derry have a fan base which is predominantly Nationalist and to whom sport on a Sunday is a way of life, yet they hardly ever play a home fixture on a Sunday. I don't honestly know why that is so, but I believe they have discovered that playing on a Sunday doesn't make economic sense. This major rule change will have little or no effect on local football and only a very few clubs will ever dip their feet in the water I think. Football is a traditional game, it's traditionally played on a Saturday and for that I believe we should be truly thankful. Now that I've cleared that up, what's all this talk about reducing the executive committee from 18 to 10 ...