WHITHER BRITISH SPORT ?

There seem to be very few sports in which the British excel. Apart from the rather exclusive pursuits of rowing, cycling and equestrian, what else are we much good at ?  Certainly not football, our tennis, golf, rugby and cricket are shaky, and our athletics is pretty much 'hit or miss'. Why ?

Quite simply put, we're decadent. In the past, we tended to dominate the world at most things; today, we're rather old and tired, added to which we now have a population which includes a huge number of immigrants whose first loyalty is to their countries of origin. Far too many of our youngsters look for 'money through celebrity' rather than from actually doing anything of note, and there's no hunger for success at anything which requires effort. Finally, our education system has been utterly destroyed by successive governments ever since 1945, concepts such as 'losing' being considered unacceptable and most schools having done away with any serious sporting activities in favour of a token bit of 'PE' or, if the girls prefer it, dance. We no longer produce athletes at our schools and rely on parents to fill in the gap. inevitably, the only parents who do are those with time, money, enthusiasm and, generally, a bit of intelligence; the result is rowers, cyclists and the occasional tennis or golf star and the odd racing driver.

Is there any hope of this changing ? Probably not, unless the powers that be get away from their idiotic notions about equality and fairness. Sport is about winning and losing, as is life. When the state stops providing support for every loser, we'll start winning at sport; until then, we can't expect to win very much as we'll always be beaten by those who are hungrier for victory. In football, as long as the likes of Rooney are paid £15 million a year by their club, why should they care much about international success ? Individuals will always emerge in some sports but for the main team games we will continue to struggle and in the rest we'll have trouble finding more than the occasional Andy Murray, while minnows like Belgium and Uruguay will outdo us year after year.