This is just wonderful!

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/09072011/58/premier-league-allardyce-thatcher-killed-football.html

(and for those who cannot see it, or cannot be bothered, here's the article below )

Allardyce says that all UK sports, not just football, are suffering because of policies adopted by former Prime Minister Thatcher's Conservative governments throughout the 1980s.

In a scathing attack in The Sun newspaper on Saturday, Allardyce said: "Since Margaret Thatcher stopped teachers being paid extra money for coaching sports after school, all sporting activities have diminished on a competitive basis.

"Kids are now more obese and unfit than ever. All the prime young athletes we were ready to develop just aren't there, so we get a lesser quality of player.

"It has not just undermined our game, it has undermined many sports in this country and created an unhealthy child. Thatcher killed football, there is no doubt about it."

A recent report stated that one in three children in Britain are obese or overweight and that 32 per cent of children play less than an hour of sport a week.

In the last 20 years, around 5,000 school playing fields have been sold off or built over as England's men's national team have continually floundered in attempts to repeat their 1966 World Cup triumph.

Allardyce, a keen student of sporting education, continued: "Look at how little kids do to what I did. I was a 200 metres runner, a 4x400m relay runner and a triple jumper.

"I was a batsman in cricket, a freestyler in swimming and swam for the town. I did the pommel horse in gymnastics and I was really good on the trampoline, as well as being a footballer.

"Kids don't do any of that now. All of that sporting activity allowed me to play in the top division in this country."

Allardyce, who recently took over at West Ham, maintains the consequences of Thatcher's policies now mean clubs are having to sign up children at increasingly young ages to ensure they have opportunities to flourish.

"This was a working-class game but it's only at private schools where the children get the sports opportunities I had - and even then a lot of them don't play football, it's mainly rugby," said the ex-Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers boss.

"Despite putting in place all sorts of advanced academy systems at clubs we are only producing half the players the school system used to."

The FA estimates it takes 10,000 hours of training and education from the age of about seven or eight to be able to be good enough to play professional football - accepting a child has the talent to begin with.

Allardyce added: "Even a club like Manchester United can only provide 4,000 hours at the moment. It's hard to do more because parents have to drive their kids there four nights a week as well as on a Sunday.

"Until we wake up and realise how important school sport is to our kids we will never repair the damage," he concluded.

This is irony on a level that i cannot even relate to!

This has made my day!

 

Unfortunately Big Sam hasn't had a minute of exercise since he retired...someone should remind him activity isn't just for the kids

 

In fairness, he makes a good point although he really didnt need to start the "im brilliant" routine.

Oh and the irony isnt lost on me either. He would have helped his point infinitely if he wasnt such a lardo himself now.

 

**** me. This self publicist is desperate to get in the news. Shut the **** up Sam and let your team do the talking

 

This + Thatcher is an horrible piece of ****, tried to destroy our region so good on fat sam for getting something right for once! Thatcher = Tory scum!

 

Total bull**** of the type you expect from Allardyce. Growing up in the seventies I can say from experience that teachers didn't stay behind after school to develop sport either and our facilities were rubbish. It didn't stop us developing as athletes or turn us into lazy and obese kids.

Also has he ever been to Africa or anywhere else in the developing world. Everywhere you go kids are playing football on improvised pitches, on the streets or on the beach, using barely adequate footballs (or worse) and with in most cases no professional coaching. Yet football is arguably developing faster in Africa than anywhere else on the planet.

If the UK kids have become lazy or uninterested in sport that is down to them and nothing else.

 

I would have thought the fact that millions can be made in sport is a good enough incentive these days.

 

Surprised it didn't snap under the weight of your army of chins.

 

I agree with you on this, I was at school until 1978 and we all did PE then, most of us played football of an evening with our mates during the lighter evenings or played cricket in the summer, all of this on the nearest piece of large grass available. We would go swimming at the local pool, fly around like loonys on our bikes covering miles every day, no wall to wall tv either and only 3 channels. The problem isn't Thatcher it's kids stuck in rooms with computers and a school system that viewed sport and competition in general as elitist, the PC brigade with their crusade to dumb down the populace and ensure that mediocracy is the level that we should aspire to are far more at fault than Thather, we used to have a lot more freedom before Heath and Safety came along and risk assessed our lives.

 

Knee jerk reaction, what did Tony Blair and Gordon Brown do for us, took us into an unwinnable war, made millions, ****ed our pension system and left us in a massive financial hole in a country full of immigrants, Labour elitist ****s living the high life now in their insulated bubble of total security and protection.

 

Spot on. Competition from TV, DVD's, computers and game consoles has done the damage. I, like you and the rest of the seventies generation were on the go all day and would not be sat indoors all day because quite honestly there was bugger all to do there.

Apologists like Allardyce just want to fall back on the lazy excuse of blaming an unpopular Prime Minister instead of acknowledging that there has actually been a dangerous shift in social culture towards physical inactivity that is probably only going to get worse.

 

We need to take a bit more responsibility ourselves, some people exercise because they want to look a certain way, keep fit, lose weight it doesn't matter. I'm not against computers and game consoles it's all about getting the balance right. Our little one loves his wii, but he cycles and swims and loves to play football. I think the big trend at the moment is "Boot Camps" they're cropping up everywhere, most of my colleagues at work are doing it, not for me though, I couldn't make the commitment.

 

You make the important point. How can Allardyce obsolve the role of parents in ensuring that their kids get involved in sports and get enough exercise and a healthy diet. I don't have kids myself, although have been a step dad in my past and I have nephews. They are all encouraged to take part in as much sport as possible and discouraged/prevented from sitting around on their backsides all day even if that is what they want to do. In my experience most kids don't need much convincing to take part in sport.

Allardyce's argument is a massive cop out!

 

Get over it BS! If kids want to be sporty then they'll be sporty vice versa. It's not like you don't see kids playing sports anymore, if anything there's surely loads more clubs now for kids than 'back in the day'? Also, 1/3 obese seems veeery far fetched if you ask me!

 

Allardyce is a self publicist.

 

I can't say what I think he is on here.

 

You can, except it would look like this:

Fat ****ing **** who can't ****ing coach a ****ing team to play ****ing football but thinks he can ****ing win the **** world cup if he became the ****ing England manager. Fat chance ****er, just go **** off and crawl into a ****ing hole and just ****ing die quietly without opening your fat ****ing mouth and polluting the atmosphere with the **** you call words.

Am I right?

EDIT: Should probably have put this on the Message of Hate thread....

 

This summs it up for me.

 

Have you been taking lessons from Murrray out he uses the f word a lot

 

No, its just a Welsh thing. Try saying **** in a Welsh accent, or listen to two South Waleans having a swearing argument, its one of the most beautiful sounds ever.