So the “bag of wind kicking tournament” is in full swing, as expected the English national team went out with the “1966, we’re going to win” and proving to (as ever) be made of complete fail. Them going out in the first stages will fortunately mean the coverage backs off a bit and the stupid levels of hype die down and we can back on with normal life.
However, what this carefully crafted rant is about is the various schools which are apparently closing early tomorrow (England kicks off mid-afternoonish) so the school kids can watch the match. What!? It’s a sodding football match, closing down the school does have potential problems for parents, scheduling of pickups where required, potentially access to the family home etc etc. I know the teachers want to watch the match but that’s not really significant.
Cue the morons on the radio with the standard lines of “it’s only once every four years”, “what a parent having to take responsibility for their children”, “but it’s football”, “chill and watch the game” and other meaningless moronisms.
So let’s look at a couple of those excuses.
“It’s only once every four years”, and in two years time we’ll have the same excuse for the olympics, the same applies to the commonwealth games etc etc. All the major sporting world championships are on a four year cycle. Football is nothing special, there are plenty of us in the UK who couldn’t give two farts for football. It is when all is said and done, only a game.
“Parent’s having to take responsibility for their children”, the parent who raised the problem (who had 24 hours notice of the school deciding to close early) had taken responsibility for their offspring. Making sure they’re ready for school, get to school, knowing when school closes for the day and having contact information with the school for if there is a major problem / illness / poor behaviour etc etc. The school has decided to change their side of the service which they get paid to provide for an entertainment event. Remind me, who’s the responsible one again?
I accept that there will be problems with some children faking illness, skipping school at lunch etc etc to be at home for the game, or firing up the iPhone to try and watch the game in lesson. These are problems for the school and parent to deal with. It comes with the territory. For the record if the short one skipped school for this reason he’d be without television / iDevice / computer for quite some period of time.
