Gordon Brown’s Integrated World Cup
GULPING Gordon Brown, the man who makes breathing look like a deliberate of will, has a plan.
Under Gordon’s management, Britain will be mighty once more. No more will we just excel at rowing and curling, but our mastery will embrace other sports, like football.
“Brown says he will make sure that every child has a sporting chance,” says the Times’ headline. Chancellor Brown wants schools to provide at least four hours of sport a week for pupils.
And if space cannot be made for sport in normal school time, then schools will remain open at weekends and holidays to accommodate the future champions.
And here is Gordon, pictured taking breaths between sips of tea – tea served in a plain white, no nonsense cup. His eyes are narrowed. He sees the rosy-fingered future.
“Raith Rover’s best-known supporter” has a dream. He wants to turn every school into a public school. Haven’t they been open on Saturdays for generations?
“I just see this as one of the great sporting decades in this country’s history,” says Brown. Brown’s view may be obscured by his cup. British sport is far from great, rowing and curling aside.
But the Times is keen to show off Brown’s sporting credentials. “He loves football with a passion that most assume he reserves for stealth taxes and macroeconomic stability,” we are told.
A Treasury Meeting is delayed while Brown asks Treasury Minister Ed Balls about Ball’s club Norwich City. How’s Darren Huckerby getting along?
“I think countries can take decisions about wanting to excel more in sport,” says Brown. “Australia made a decision to be a successful sporting nation.” Indeed, Australia excels in many sports, notably swimming, cricket, netball and both rugby codes. And this not counting Aussie Rules, a game they invented and excel at.
Says Brown: “I will give you an example. Ninety per cent of Australian adults will not be smoking by 2020. We will not get that figure until 2050. Australia made the decision to be a non-smoking nation.”
When Australia makes a decision to refill the hole in the ozone layer that lies directly above it, we will surely look on with even more envy.
Brown is keen to address the link between sporting success and not smoking, a link not always obvious when we recall that picture of Zinedine Zidane smoking a fag at the World Cup and remember how England won the World cup in 1966 with a team that included a few puffers. Shane Warne has been a 40-a-day man; Ian Botham smoked, so too Dennis Compton; Tiger Woods has smoked; Freddie Flintoff celebrated the 2005 Ashes victory with a meal of cigars; Maradonna has smoked and teken drugs; and on…
But Gordon has a point to make. “Finland made a decision to tackle heart disease and 60 per cent of adults take part in some physical activity every week,” says Brown.
Finland excels at sport, notably throwing the javelin. Like Australia, Finland has never won Football’s World Cup, a trophy that when won can make more people feel better than any amount of spear chucking and dressing up in Aussie Rules boob tubes and hot pants.
But, then, neither Australia nor Finland has hosted the world’s most-watched sporting event. And England might get to host football’s World Cup for a second time. Brown is backing the English bid for 2018.
Add this to the 2012 Olympics and you have two parts of Brown’s sporting decade of triumph. It’s the ten-year plan for integrated sporting excellence.
And it will begin just as soon as Brown’s finished his tea and the Home Nations can find men who can play and coach the game as well as Gordon talks it…
Posted: 12th, February 2007 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
