Nanny Takes A Penalty Shot

Well, that didn't take long did it?  After England's soccer team went out of the European Championship, it was likely that in the media wail-fest that followed, politics would soon intrude.  So Tracey Crouch, Sports Minister, qualified FA coach with a junior girls team to worry about has pulled on her boots and stuck them into the Football Association.

The FA down the years has taken money from the state to help with this and that and are now in hock to it.  When Tracey says jump the FA Council will jump, all the inefficient etc. 124 of them.  It means that football in England could become part of the Department for Media, Arts, Culture, Sport, Introspective Activities and anything else that can't be found a better home.

It will be state run and that means The Nanny State.  But what sort of Nanny?  There are many on offer from the works of fiction and drama.  Choosing one for Tracey and her Department, the prospect is bad, I refer to the ultimate Nanny.

It is the one from the TV series "Count Duckula" see Wikipedia for the full mad story line.  Given the mix of Tracey, Theresa, Hammond etc. making the decisions this is the most likely result.  Wikipedia says of her, picture above:

Nanny, is Duckula's nanny, as well as housekeeper. She is an extremely large (in the episode "Alps-A-Daisy," it's revealed she's seven feet tall) and clumsy hen, possessing incredible strength and inevitably messing up whatever task she is set to do.

She has a blind spot regarding doors, and often crashes through a door without opening it first, or (more commonly) walks right through the wall, especially a few feet off from the door's position. Not surprisingly, she is the one who mistakes ketchup for blood in Duckula's current resurrection. In the episode "Prime-Time Duck" her real name is revealed to be Amnesia.

She is supremely unintelligent, and completely unreliable. She is devoted to her "Ducky-boos," as she calls Duckula, and has a deep maternal affection for him, although her clumsiness often inadvertently causes him harm. A recurring gag is her inability to understand what people around her are talking about.

End of quote, so there it is, the future of English football or at best the most rational one possible.  Certainly, the organisation of the FA at present does reflect a past era, but is it still a useful body that deals well enough with its basic functions.

The media and the vast majority of people however are only concerned with the England football team.  If this could be separated out just what else needs change?  So could the FA  reform itself?  Does it really need to be government run or does this reflect current PC and such obsessions of modernity?

If it does become a state agency and retains full control over the England team, then football in England will become unpredictable, a mess, a never ending saga of government waste, cupidity and stupidity like just about everything our present administrations do.

Those recalling the days of the Soviet Union and its communist satellites will recall that sports persons commonly held military rank in the officer classes and were assisted by other agencies of the state, notably the government science laboratories.  They were the high old days of communist achievement.

Whether the England team win their games or not, will as ever, depend on the players and who is coaching them, or rather how good and well organised the opposition are and these days they all seem to be getting better.  England are just another team in a global sport.

Assuming of course, that the choice of players isn't done by the media advisers in Downing Street looking for a spin story or two to keep Rupert happy.