Jumpers for Goalposts - Isn't It?

This is the most serious subject I have written about to date - football. I never thought I would EVER say this but football is now AWFUL. It can be the town sport of Grantham for all I care. The rest of us can enjoy what I always used to see as the game for toffs - rugby union!
I used to be obsessed by football. From the age of about five, when my late dad took me to my first ever game, I ADORED football. The very mention of it made by eyes resemble dinner plates. I spent EVERY SINGLE DAYLIGHT HOUR outside school playing it. My little pals and I used to race home, wolf down our tea and then charge up to the local park to get in as much of a kick-about as we could (my mum was glad to get me out of the house and the fear of being preyed on by paedophiles was not then prevalent). We re-enacted the great matches of the '60s and '70s, we used to pretend we were certain players (I was ALWAYS Ian Storey-Moore), we used to excitedly scream out our own commentary as we raced around with the ball, it WAS jumpers for goalposts and we loved it - ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!!! The park keeper used to walk the outskirts of the park ringing a bell to tell everyone that he was locking the gates and we used to up-jumpers-and-ball and run to get ahead of him, start playing again and then decamp to the next near-gate spot when he caught up with us. We came home filthy, covered in cuts and bruises, tired but happy that we had actually managed to score that crucial extra goal against Poland which would, in the real world, have taken England to the 1974 World Cup Finals (yes, it still hurts!). If, by any chance, my pals weren't available to play (they had to provide a doctor's note!) I used to kick a ball against our garage door for hours on end, trying to place the ball in the furthermost reaches of a goal I had painted on myself (I got a severe slap for that!) In school I always played for the school teams and lived for Thursdays (double games in the afternoon) and Saturdays (a titanic clash with another school and, if it was an away game, the trip home on the bus listening to Sports Roundup).
I collected Shell football coins, Shoot comic stickers, I kept a league table and moved the little, card teams up or down, depending on that Saturday's results, which I also logged religiously, along with the following day's newspaper clippings of my team's game.
When it was too dark to play I used to play Subbuteo (a table football game) with my next door neighbour and kept equally detailed tables and reports of how my teams had performed. When that became impossible (because my mate's mum wanted me out of her house) I used to play the F A Cup board game - ON MY OWN!!!
When my dad died we moved to another place 70 miles away but I still travelled back to watch "my team" whenever I could. When my knees and my lungs no longer allowed me to play I still went to watch my heroes.
It was socially important as well. Towns lived and thrived on their football teams. A good run in the league or the cup brought prosperity and, in the case of my boys, international respect which no army of spin doctors could ever generate. A football team used to be the life and heart of a town.
All that ended about five or ten years ago - I forget. It all changed, and changed massively for the worst. MONEY became the God. A couple of teams started it. Managers were no longer important, it was players and their obscene wage demands which counted. Fans were sent to the sidelines. Shareholders and boards of fat, inadequate, publicity-seeking directors took centre stage. We had win-at-all costs football, a league ranked on how much a club was worth (THAT IS EXACTLY HOW IT IS RANKED AT THE MOMENT) and a yawning chasm appeared between about five greedy outfits and the rest. The others now have no chance whatever of reaching the heights, of winning "The Cup" or of joining the big boys.
The majority of the players are all utter, utter, utter, utter juvenile, chav, thick and obscenely overpaid wankers. They roll about in agony if their perm snaps, they cheat, they dive, they attack referees, they collect onyx ashtrays and awful, tasteless homes and knock off any braindead, under-age disco tarts they can find. I hate the fucking lot of them. They have ruined such a beautiful and special thing - as all Thatcherites do.
No, some years ago I started watching the posh boys' game - rugby union. I put aside my inverted snob prejudices and discovered what a fantastic game it is. Real men playing a real game. It's got nothing to do with being macho. It just happens to be more exciting than today's predictable footy debacles, more honestly played and more keenly contested. Bollocks to anyone who thinks it is only for public school types. The Welsh ruled the rugby world in the '70s and I don't recall many members of those famous sides attending posh schools - it was the pits for them, literally.
I hate to say this, because it has been such an important part of my life, but football can sod off to Grantham (no doubt in an extremely expensive Italian sports car).