A Hunter In The Rain To Cut The Neck Up In The Present Stage

I know we're all gripped by Olympic fever but this whole, "God, don't they show up our footballers" nonsense is a touch silly, and today's most retweeted/discussed/admired article is this from The Sun - Hunter Davies slags off footballers.

I wish I had time to really dissect it but I haven't so I'll just raise a few points.

1)  There were footballers at the Olympics.  In "Team GB". Duh.

2)  He writes this about footballer: "some of us have even considered them as role models."  This man

has footballers as role models?

Somehow, I don't think so.

3 He ghost-wrote an autobiography of Rooney.  Here he is contradicting everything he says in The Sun today, for is there any more archetypal modern footballer than Rooney?  Describing Rooney when they met to talk about the book:

during these sessions, Wayne turned off his mobile, gave me his full attention and concentrated for the full three hours. Again, this is unusual and goes against the image of the modern footballer as being arrogant, spoiled and having a minimal attention span.

Perhaps most surprisingly, during all of that time I never once heard him swear. Obviously, he does so on the field. But this is when he is at work, in an industrial setting, if you like.

Off the pitch though, he is always polite and respectful. He lives for football, not attention.

And do you know why he acts this way? Because his Mum would have given him a slap should she have heard him swearing or being disrespectful to his elders.

And here he is literally contradicting himself.   Footballers as Role models you say Hunter?

Unlike many, I don't think that footballers should be looked at as role models. Or models of any kind. They don't get chosen for their team for that purpose. They also should not claim to be moral leaders, telling us how to lead our lives.

Football fans will still cheer them, as long as they are doing the business on the pitch, regardless of their antics in nightclubs. But if any modern player is worth looking up to, for modesty, humility and a determination to improve, then Wayne Rooney is your man.

Anyway, there's only 2 days then we can all go back to football, sports pages full of football, and forget these other sports...