TIGER WOODS IS A LUCKY MAN.

In the past, sport was something enjoyed by young men, and rarely by young women, of means; it was an amateur pastime and was played for enojoyment and prestige.

 

Today is very different. Most sports have been 'professionalised' and are now played with money in mind. The way in which they are played, the rules and the the prizes are all determined by financial considerations. Consequently some sports, though certainly not all, have been corrupted and are no longer played in a sportsmanlike manner; cheating has become a normal part of the 'game' in some instances. The prime example has to be football in which the rules seem to be ignored most of the time, particularly those relating to the direct interactions between players. Cricket, too, is no longer played in the gentlemanly manner that it was in my youth and players will happily get away with anything they can.

 

Today, we've seen two instances of rule breaches in different sports which seem to have been treated very differently. In the Formula 1 Grand Prix qualifying round in China, the Red Bull driver Mark Webber, recognized as being one of the top drivers around, ran out of fuel; as the adjudicators monitor the fuel to ensure it is within prescribed standards, Webber failed to provide a sample and suffered the full penalty for his offence. He will start from last place in the race tomorrow. In the 'Masters' golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, Tiger Woods not only played a shot from an incorrect position but also returned an incorrect score; both of these are offences, the first having a standard penalty of 2 shots and the second of mandatory disqualification. At the discretion of the stewards, only the first has been applied, though the full story may not yet have been told.

 

In Formula 1, the stewards chose to be very hard on Webber, a man for whom little seems to go right; the rules are the rules. In Golf, a sport in which adherence to the rules is usually paramount, the stewards have chosen to be somewhat picky about which rules to follow. In fact, as more details are revealed, it seems that they may even have done their damnest to avoid doing anything in support of 'their man'. Woods clearly played from the wrong place and yet the rules official on the course said nothing; Woods reportedly told officials in the scoring hut what he had done and they did nothing. It was not until he told the press and public that the officials took any notice. Now they have done as little as they can; a 2 shot penalty but no disqualification.

 

There can be no doubt that what Woods did was wrong but it seems that he actually did all that he reasonably could have done to ensure that the officials knew exactly what had happened; it appears that he is not to blame for this debacle. Nonetheless, and I acknowledge that I do not like the man one little bit, he should have sought proper advice on the course and should have been disqualified for returning an inaccurate card. That he is happily playing the third round as I write tells me that the officials in Augusta have bowed to the financial and nationalistic pressures on them by allowing Woods to continue, albeit with a stroke penalty.

 

I had thought that golf was one of sports that was immune to corruption but now I begin to wonder. When money and, in the particular case of the USA, national pride are considered of over-riding importance, how can we be sure that adjudications on the application of the rules will be fair and just ? The simple answer is that we cannot.

MONEY WINS THE BATTLE OF MANCHESTER

Today's football scores have produced one of the most amazing results of the last 60 or more years.

There have obviously been a few eccentric results in the past, sometimes with top-flight teams being beaten by supposedly vastly inferior oppostion, but has there ever been a more extraordinary result than the 1-6 drubbing suffered by Manchester United at home to their arch rivals, Manchester City, today ?

The simple answer has to be 'NO' but that is to ignore the true facts behind this match. Manchester United played a large part of the game with 10 men, after one of their number was sent off, and 3 of the goals were scored on, or after, the end of normal time. Not that any of this will be any consolation to the distraught United fans, nor of any interest to the elated City followers.

What is of greatest importance is how this result has come about. A few weeks ago, Manchester City thumped Tottenham 5-1 at White Hart Lane; since then, they've run up a string of wins with goals galore and now head the Premier League by a distance. Unless something untoward happens, they could be crowned Champions tomorrow as there's little likelihood of anyone challenging them. All this from a team that a couple of years ago were struggling to escape from mid-table at best; how has this happened ?

Manchester City has been bought by an Arabic conglomerate that has injected a ludicrous amount of money into the team, having seen a business opportunity in exploiting the football-mad youth, and others, of the world. In the short term, they will undoubtedly make a lot of money, but what will happen when the bubble bursts, as all bubbles eventually do ? We are currently in a casino where the player with the biggest wallet wins because no one can afford to 'see' his hand, but what happens when the other players all drop out and refuse to play any further ?

The importance of football has been exaggerated to a point of lunacy. The pay of the players has reached a level that is completely unsustainable without the vast advertising revenues that are currently attracted and that has no connection with pay in the real world that the supporters inhabit. This is, after all, a game that is basically played by children in school playgrounds and fields and yet the status awarded to the players is something that eclipses the greatest statesmen, scientists and philosophers by many times. This has to, and will, end.

Today's result at Old Trafford was, in reality, only to be expected; it was not all that extraordinary at all. It was a consequence of a concatenation of events, the most potent of which, financial speculation, will inevitably lead to an eventual collapse in the finances of the game. At some point, interests will change and profits will fall, or, quite simply, the current investors will see greater profit in some other venture. However it happens, football will oneday become nothing more than the the game it once was; sadly, that day may be some-way off and, by then, it's quite possible that Manchester City will be nothing more than a name in football history.