Stupidity and self-interest, rather than respect, behind football wipeout

When the Premier League called all games off as ‘a mark of respect to the Queen’ they were actually hopelessly craven to the business of protecting their own brands

OFF WITH THEIR GAMES: All action in the Premier League and the EFL was postponed over the weekend following the death of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth last Thursday. Pic: PA

When the Premier League and Football League called all games of football off as, in a particularly meaningless cliche, ‘a mark of respect to the Queen’ they were actually hopelessly craven to the business of protecting their own brands. They were afraid of how it would look if they allowed games to go ahead and someone somewhere pointed at them and called them callous traitors. Because make no mistake, this was not anything other than a panicked and crude marketing decision, which had not been thought through fully. A decision that pretty much the whole of the game thought was wrong.

Almost every other sport had grown-ups in the room and everything from horse racing to rugby, superbikes and motor racing decided to go ahead, some after a day’s break. But by then, it was already too late for British football which had jumped in two-footed but, tin-eared and blinkered as ever, had jumped the wrong way.