Last Monday was a black day for football with two ex-players moving on to the big pitch in the sky within hours of each other.

I know some of you may not be, but I’m plenty old enough to remember Trevor Francis as a silky smooth, supremely talented and highly prolific striker playing for the likes of Birmingham, Nottingham Forest, Sampdoria and England.

Hearing he had passed away last week at the relatively young age of 69 was deeply saddening, mostly because, as a youngster, he was one of my first heroes, the type of player you wanted to be when you grew up.

You don’t really ever think of the football legends you grew up worshipping as a child as being mere mortals

Not only was he a pleasure to watch, but back in 1979 Francis also became the first player in England to command a seven-figure transfer fee when Brian Clough splashed out just over a million pounds to take him to the City Ground.

And seeing that transfer barrier broken was another wow factor in the mind of an impressionable, football-crazy seven-year-old boy.

I guess it has a lot to do with my own advancing years, but you don’t really ever think of the football legends you grew up worshipping as a child as being mere mortals.

After hanging up his boots, Francis went on to have a successful managerial career with Queens Park Rangers, Birmingham City, Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday, who he led to third place in the top-flight and both domestic cup finals in 1993.

And it was during his time with the Owls that he nurtured and developed a young English midfielder called Chris Bart-Williams... who shockingly also passed away on Monday, at the age of just 49.

As a semi-Sheffield Wednesday fan, I used to really enjoy watching Bart Williams play and thought he had the skills to go all the way to the very top of the game, domestically and internationally.

That didn’t quite happen, but he still had an excellent career, moving from Wednesday to Forest and then Charlton, and even having a brief, ill-fated eight-match stint over here with Marsaxlokk.

More recently, he was a successful and well-respected coach in the US where he was involved in a number of football programmes for children and academies, always looking to give something back to the sport.

It’s not been a great week for football.

 

Ashes to ashes

I know not many of you follow cricket. But I do, at least on an international level, and right now England are taking on Australia in the Ashes. And, for the sport, that’s rather a big deal.

However, the best of five series was effectively killed off last weekend when the two sides drew their game in Manchester.

That kept Australia 2-1 ahead going into this weekend’s final game and, if the series is drawn, current holders Australia get to keep the ‘urn’.

However, my beef here isn’t with that system, although I don’t particularly like it. It’s with the fact that the fourth game, last weekend’s game, ended in a draw.

In that match, England were absolutely hammering Australia and were well on course to level the series at 2-2 and set up an amazing deciding test.

But rain intervened and washed out most of the final two days, leading to the draw.

I’m sorry, but that is just madness. That’s like a football team leading a game 6-0 with 15 minutes to go and then a snowstorm hits, the game can’t be continued, so you call it a draw. Ludicrous.

Cricket is trying to do a lot to reinvent itself and make the sport more relevant to the modern world. But this sort of nonsense isn’t helping.

I don’t mind if one of the team battles out for a draw as that is part and parcel of cricket. But for a team that is obviously heading for defeat to be handed a draw just because of the weather. Well, that’s just lunacy.

 

One sport, two versions

As you probably know, I have been enjoying watching women’s football expand, develop and grow in popularity over the last couple of years.

And I would never shy away from encouraging others – even the biggest of doubters – from giving it a try on the basis that I think they will be positively surprised by the quality.

However, there is one thing about this sport’s sudden boom in popularity that does get on my nerves: the way news from the women’s game has been lumped together with the men’s.

Take the BBC, for example. I check the sport section of their website numerous times a day to get my football fix. But it has been increasingly impossible to differentiate between stories from the men’s and women’s worlds.

When I saw a recent headline ‘England striker joins Arsenal on free transfer after leaving Man United’, I almost dropped my bacon sandwich.

Who? How? When? Why? Has Rashford walked out? Have Arsenal taken a huge gamble on Mason Greenwood? Has the world gone mad?!

Not at all. In fact, the headline referred to Alessia Russo, an integral part of the England women’s team and one of the best female players around. She had moved to the London club.

Whether the politically correct masses like it or not, I don’t like this blurring of the lines.

Although they both fall under the global umbrella of football, they are entirely distinct areas of the game and should be treated as such. Give them equal importance, sure, but don’t blend them both together in an indistinguishable blob.

Rant over.

 

A friendly reminder

It’s happening again: People are letting themselves get carried away with pre-season results...

“We beat Arsenal 2-0 despite all the money they’ve spent,” I heard one particularly cocky Man United fan say last week, without a hint of irony in their voice.

Yes, you did indeed beat them 2-0 mate. In a game that didn’t matter, meant nothing to any of the players on the pitch, and which will have no bearing on the season proper.

Friendlies like these are there merely to build fitness, get the muscles moving and maybe try out a few new lads and the occasional new formation. That’s it.

Which is why I am not at all worried that Sheffield United have lost to Rotherham and Girona in the last few days without scoring a goal and barely having a shot on target.

Not worried in the least.

 

E-mail: James@quizando.com

Twitter: @Maltablade