A guest piece by Talking the Blues’ George Costigan:

A call to arms.
Footy fans.
Unite.

We all love to hate each other – red and blue, gooner and spur etc etc etc and we all love nothing more
than to beat each other and if it’s a slutchy OG off their best player’s arse in the last moment – so very
much the better! Yeah? Yeah! I’m a footy fan.

I have a son who’s a red and I’m a blue and Monday night I watched his lot play the skunks. Didn’t watch
it all, but that’s not the point. ‘I’m not sure I watched a football game,’ said Slot afterwards, but that’s not
the point either. Red card, ten men equalise against the champs and a sixteen year old sub gets a 100th
minute winner – what’s to complain about? Cracking Entertainment innit??

The point is the ball was in play for 40.8% of the ‘match’.

The worst statistic yet, in this increasing decline of Value For Our Money.

34 free kicks, probably involving 34 ludicrous ‘hands over our mouths’ conversations between three
athletes possibly earning more than the gate receipts, wasting their share of the 59.2 % of the ‘match’ the
paying public did not get to see. The players ARE complicit in this utter bollocks, along with the clubs,
the rule makers, the FA, FIFA, the telly companies etc etc.

I will say this once, and in passing, if you stopped the clock when the ball is not in play, all these issues
would disappear.

But, that is no longer the point either as that drum has been beating and ignored and you can only believe

it will continue to be ignored – since it is assumed it threatens the god of profit. Again – that, too is by-
the-by.

The point now is how do we, the paying public, the life-blood of each club, the custodians of our ever-
changing mercenaries who wear our increasingly expensive shirts, how do we deal with this?

Covid proved footy is less without us. But will we vote with our feet? No. And why should we? We love
the game, we love our teams, we are addicts, we are addicted. And – we are being RINSED, man. Woman
and child.

I humbly suggest that we, Forest fans, RS, City, Brentford, Brighton, ‘ammers, the lot – all of us – hire
some heavyweight lawyer to sue those responsible for cheating us out of a deal that surely goes, ‘I have
bought a ticket, you provide me with 90 minutes of footy.’

Or, at the end of each match, have fans demanding, as in the case of Monday night’s Organised and
Sanctioned Farce – 59.2% of their cash being refunded, please…

We MUST stop them shitting on us.

We are better than that – and frankly, better than them, too.

George Costigan