simonineaston wrote: ↑2 Aug 2022, 9:16am
As an aside, the media commentary has now switched from congratulations and remarking on how things have changed for the women's team to speculating on the subject of what might happen next. At the core of this discussion is the elephant in the room - money. At which point I shudder when I recall the men's game and how it's changed in my lifetime - and seldom for the better.
I wish the women's team all the very best in the world, and hope too that they're able to resist the worst aspects of modern professional sport.
+1
I'm not optimistic knowing the way of the world.
As an aside/maybe a sign of the way things are going.
I had some stuff to do yesterday on the bike so trained and biked to central London and Trafalgar Square.
Apart from the "curated" managed pit in the middle of the square, a fair number of happy and interested souls had gathered on the pavement just the other side of the square's walls to celebrate/witness/pay their respects - over the road from South Africa house. A mesh fence had been put there - but big mesh you could see through perfectly easily and you could argue that that had been put there for basic safety reasons in case anyone was tempted to get on top of the wall.
But on top of this had been laid a light euro branded plastic meshy thing I can only liken to some sort of tempting underswear stuff - tiny tiny holes you couldn't really see though and were probably only there to stop it catching the wind. In effect blocking the view.
Before the team arrived we were treated to Khan (at least no Boris) sticking his oar in/milking the happy occasion for his own benefit - not sure why - a national team, not a London one.
Then folks tried quite naturally to unfasten the light material from the fence - it was only held by the tiniest of threads at the top.
Would you believe that security came twice to put it back and block our view.
They could give no reason why they were doing this other than that "it's to stop people seeing".
They were doing it on the instructions of the GLA of which Khan is mayor.
Not sure if called in by the security guards but a policecar pulled up for a while.
A bloke next to me with his wife seemed like a traditional east London sort. Like me his reaction to "security" was a mixture of disbelief/outrage/laughter. Quite possible that he was at one time a close neighbour of Bobby Moore's family in those very different times.
I wasn't altogether surprised that the team turned up at 12:40 pretty much bang on the dot, despite being maybe somewhat the worse for wear, as the beeb had announced this time in advance.
And so the media sponsor packaged show went on.
I remember when Trafalgar Square was a public space used for any number of events and demos.
No longer it seems - it's often fenced off.
