Although we now consider it as part of the norm, football in August still doesn’t sit well as it is so synonymous with winter. It has been around for a while now but it still feels as if the start of the new season sounds the death knell for our summer, and the dark night will soon be upon us. It’s also a sad fact that football this August is like no other, as the usually high octane excitement of the first day of the season has been marred by games being cancelled.
This isn’t due to the weather or anything so innocent, this is due to the acts of mindless violence that have taken place across the UK over the past week; this is due to the riots. The decision to let other games go ahead has been said by many to be madness, as crowds of drink fuelled football fans streaming through parts of run down cities already decimated by the riots is a recipe for disaster.
Those police officers who have worked tirelessly for days to try and restore order on our streets will invariably now be deployed to try and keep order amongst a different kind of threat. This is an explosive cocktail of extra, yet easily avoidable, tensions that the country as a whole could do without. Those in power should have got their priorities right and delayed the start of the season, the thugs wouldn’t have won, the country would have.