The Dolman Pragmatist

Well yes and no. If you put the Bobby Charlton who played in 1966 in present day football he wouldn’t stand a chance. He would have to be ten times fitter; to have a range of skills he didn’t have then; and to have a different mindset and lifestyle. So the question is: would he still be Bobby Charlton? You can only compare what you know, and sadly it’s probably true that footballers from the 1960s would struggle in today’s game. I’ve always felt that the standard of football in the heady Division 1 days of 1976-1980 probably equates to no higher than the average Championship standard today. I suspect that the Lee Johnson team of 2017 would have done very well in Division 1 in 1976. Today’s Man City team would annihilate the 1966 England team.

Folsom Prison Blues … Johnny Cash

Don’t bother with the shop at the Nou Camp unless you’ve taken out a second mortgage!

Don’t Stop … Fleetwood Mac

Hell Bent For Leather … Judas Priest

Great sportsman and fantastic commentator.

I don’t, and I’m not being negative just for the sake of it, but I find it even more frustrating when I see us play so we’ll for long stretches of the game, only to be undermined by schoolboy errors in defence; very poor play from Williams; and some strange decisions in the last 15 minutes when we might have snatched an equaliser. Pearson really needs to sort the defending out, particularly as a former defender himself. Most successful teams are built on a solid defence that concedes few goals. We have to stop donating goals to the opposition.

Naismith, that was probably his worst mistake so far.

Hi Hi Hazel … Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band

Gridlock … Warren Zevon

It wasn’t even ‘matches’ that were banned, it was ‘fixtures’. Figure that out. My club’s youth players were out training yesterday, and my son’s team played an 11x11 ‘training match’ against another squad from his club. That was allowed.

There have been plenty of world leaders that have been parents and grandparents who you would not want to mourn. Everyone is entitled to their own views, but the present censorship by media (the failure to air anything that suggests anything other than an overwhelmingly positive view of the late Queen) is bound to frustrate those who don’t share those feelings. I doubt that many people are actually happy about the Queen’s death (yes, that’s ‘death’, not ‘passing’) but there may be many who are disinterested or indifferent, and I’m not sure why their view is any less valid than anyone else’s, whether you agree with them or not.

‘Attested’, ‘nugatory’, ‘signally’? Speak proper!

We’re doing the same…

That’s the most bizarre thing of all: the FA have actually denied football supporters their opportunity to pay their respects.

Horrendously difficult? He’s been rehearsing for this moment for years.

My grassroots club is being charged for pitch hire this Sunday because government guidelines are that sport doesn’t need to be cancelled. County FA are saying that they won’t reimburse us because the instruction to cancel all games was made centrally and they have no control over it. With our youth setup that’s a lot of money. Marvellous.

No one’s stopping you mate. But why do you need an entire National programme of football to be put off so that you can ‘mourn with respect’ (which does beg the question whether it’s possible to mourn without respect)? I believe the definition of ‘mourn’ is to feel sad. Most people probably feel sad at the moment, but life goes on. Cancelling football won’t help me to feel sad, it will probably just make me bored and irritable. Can’t see that that will improve anyone else’s quality of mourning.

Ok then, will you please tell me how not playing football expresses respect?

We’re going ahead with ‘training’.

Has entertainment been closed down then? I hadn’t seen that…

So stop everything then, not just sport.

Well said. If people don’t want to go to football as a mark of respect, whatever that means, it’s up them. No one would be forcing them to. However, those of us who would like to participate in sport are not allowed to. Ridiculous.

And don’t forget that, apparently, a full programme of football went ahead three days after George VI died, so this is not in keeping with precedent.

Utterly ridiculous. Next thing is they’ll scrap youth football on Sunday as I’m sure HRH would regards it as massively disrespectful for a group of small boys to kick a ball around in the fresh air. And all this after what was probably a gross act of deception yesterday, as Huw Edwards and Nicholas Witchell perpetuated the myth that the Queen was still alive when it’s becoming increasingly apparent that she had already died. Edwards’s black tie at lunchtime was already a giveaway, so presumably the statement that ‘doctors were concerned’ was that signal that she had died, and the detailed plan could kick in. Indeed Witchell spent all afternoon discussing her death in the past tense, frequently having to correct himself and remind viewers that off course they hoped that she would recover. They did something very similar when George V died to avoid his death being first reported in the evening papers rather than The Times.