remember hillsborough?: when will politicians learn that their meddling in our game is not welcome

Keep politics out of sport. It has been a cry de coeur for decades: seldom taken seriously, often ignored deliberately under the auspices of the ‘greater good’.

While it is true that government intervention in sport out of necessity has had some spectacular results (Australia - one of the greatest sporting nations in the world – encouraging sport to curb violence in a mainly male population around garrison towns at turn of the 19th century, a good example) it often ends in tears.

But where the Australians aim was to distract the populus, engage them in activity that’s good for them, the UK government’s intervention has almost always been based on class dividing lines.

In the 16th and 17th century only the landed gentry were able to pursue game. However, the local population’s pursuit of a rather wild ancestor of the game of football (whole villages trying to kill each other – not unlike hooligans 300 years later) was banned by various kings from the 13th to the 18th century.

When the sport finally went legit in the 1870s, the government could not have cared two hoots. In fact, it cared little for football until Tory PM Margaret Thatcher professed to hating the game, and her interventionist nature (remember ID cards?) was, it can be argued, indirectly to blame for the deaths of at least 96 fans in Sheffield in 1989.

In the late 1970s and early 80s football had become the open wound on the face of the UK’s discontent. It was widely believed that the violence in and around the game was a manifestation of the general malaise the country was feeling. Talking to the football clubs, the fans and coming up with intuitive solutions to the problem (much of what was achieved a year after Hillsborough with the Taylor Report), was dismissed in favour of penning the supporters in like animals.

This attitude led to the hemming in of Liverpool fans in the Leppings Lane end of Sheffield Wednesday’s ground in that fateful FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest in April 1989, and the decision by police to delay opening sluice gates at the front of the pen that saw 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death.

It is a testament to how wrong the government got it that it took them just four months to produce a report recommending they reverse all policies on fences. To put the speed of that report into perspective, it took them 15 years to make a decision on a fifth terminal at Heathrow – a vital business hub, bringing in billions of pounds in revenue a year.

Just after the Taylor Report’s sanitation of the game (new stadia, better facilities), came Sky’s investment in the game and a new middle-class football supporter. From there politicians attitudes changed to the neanderthal supporter and with the arrival of a Labour government in 1997 came an unprecedented number of football fan MPs.

Even the PM Tony Blair was a so-called Newcastle fan (though his recollection of famous footballers was incredibly dubious).

Then (as now) they saw football as a vote winner – and yet again they look to football to get them into power. Legislation being the only way considering no one is going to believe that Gordon Brown – who lost sight in one eye playing rugby – has any interest in the game at all.

The new proposals by this incumbent Labour government smack of the same knee jerk reaction to a general malaise in the game. This time the evil is money – and the greed of some weighed alongside the gullibility of others.

They believe that the furore over extreme debt over clubs (highlighted by Man Utd and Portsmouth) is a reason to force football clubs to government control over ownership, an unworkable rule on allowing ‘fans’ to bid for the club (what constitutes a fan in law?), and even give government control to reorganise the FA is tantamount to nationalising the sport.

There is no doubt that money is the problem in sport. But so is the greed of the fans that continue to buy into the dream. Man Utd fans are the worst. They do not realise how hypocritical they are by complaining that their club is being milked and then turning up and paying the money to those milking them dry. Like turkeys voting for Christmas. In green and yellow scarves.

Simple economics will sort the problem out – and perhaps Uefa, too. While the government seeks control a perfectly decent plan has been put together by Michel Platini in Nyon, Switzerland, by Uefa. If either fails, simple economics dictates that while the money is there people will attempt to take as much as they can. When the lean times come, and they will, the natural order of things will separate those that care about football from those that don’t.

It’s all cyclical. But if you mess with something, there will be consequences – and not good ones at that.