What Now!

Here we are once again on the brink of a New Year and what has the future in store for us? There seems to be little light at the end of the tunnel, in the last week we've heard that Lisburn Distillery are facing a 'winding up' order and Institute have told their players they must take a 50% wage cut (rumour has it that that'll only reduce their outgoings by £2,000 a week). Who's next I wonder? There's nobody safe (well Linfield are safe, propped up by the I.F.A. as they are), but as I look around the grounds all I see are dwindling attendances, poor spectating facilities and sub-standard toilet facilities. Will somebody at the top please sit up and take notice?

Gone are the days when we fans would go through 'thick and thin' and endure antiquated toilet facilities in order to support our team. We expect, nay demand proper viewing facilities and the most hygienic toilet facilities it's possible to have. My colleague Sammy Patterson decided this year to do a survey on the away venues of our opponents. Admittedly he has been somewhat lax in this department but he tells me when he reviews the conditions we are subjected to in our travels he feels utter despair. I myself am loath to visit the toilets at away grounds unless I can do no better and faced with a long journey home I usually have to give-in and brave the conditions.

Then there is the standard of refereeing we have to endure week in and week out. If the referees were consistent it would be a start. How many times have we witnessed one team getting away with physical contact, while once the other team put a foot wrong, out comes the yellow cards. As for the offside rule, I confess I don't understand it anymore and neither do most of the linesmen (referees assistants), who officiate at Irish league games. I think it's time we went back to the basics with this rule, if you're in an offside position, then it's a free kick to the other side, that way its easy to enforce and easy to understand.

We are now facing a fixture pile-up after losing two games to the adverse weather conditions. So what does the Premier league do about it? Sweet F.A. as usual. In fact their spokesman (somebody called Craig Stanfield, who the hell he is I'm sure I don't know), says we've nothing to worry about. Well for a start there's the loss of revenue, 2 holiday fixtures were wiped out and if the league's normal fixture planning is anything to go by, they'll be played while competing against Champions league matches. Who in their right mind wants to endure the archaic conditions prevalent at most Irish league grounds when they can sit at home in comfort instead.

The big question at the moment seems to be are we entering two thousand and ten, or twenty ten? As far as football here is concerned we're still back in the 1970's. We would just love to be embracing the future with little to concern us but what to call the year. Instead we have to worry about the incompetents who are running our game and seem to have lost touch with reality. In the words of our American friends, 'it's time to wake up and smell the coffee', please do so before it's too late, Happy New Year!