It’s not often I choose to write about sport. I have never been able to whip up enthusiasm for competitive sports – which my games teacher at school chastised me for, more than once. I just happen to think there are more constructive things to do in this world than bish, bash bosh.

One of the least interesting of these time wasting activities is called ‘football’. Why? Because this is one of the few sports which is capable of producing a nil, nil score. The mere thought of sitting in one place for a couple of hours watching colourfully clad people kick a round thing and not even scoring, fills me with righteous conceit. Surely the idea of a sport is to create a thrill, an excitement, a feeling of mutual accomplishment. Two scores rise in competition with one another, as time ticks away. Such a situation has the ingredients of entertainment and is apparent in tennis and cricket and many other sports. However football stands on it’s own in being able to totally frustrate it’s players and spectators.

Imagine then that you are Italian and watching the World Cup Qualifiers Second Round Game 2, 2017. There are your players – magnificent in Italian blue, pink, orange whatever it is, against Sweden. Up and down they all run and at half time nothing has been achieved. Well, you think, as you down a couple of pizzas and beer or wine or whatever stimulant they sell at football matches, in the next half we will score. But as the effect of the half time refreshments has dulled into a sleep producing paralysis, the football is having the same effect. Nil Nil. Nil Points as they say in the Euro Song Contest. Now’t put in and now’t taken out. Zilch Zilch. Nada, Niente. As King Lear would have said if he was there, ‘nothing comes of nothing, speak again!’

So the Italians are out of the World Cup this time around. Oh dear. Not much left to hold the country together now. Watch out for Catalan-style rebellion in Italy!

My mind starts to look for solutions when I see an obvious problem like this. Why is football so boring? Clearly, it is too hard to score a goal. If the final score was 10-12, you can imagine that some pretty skilful dodging and kicking had been going on. Thousands of people would be crowding into bars and restaurants with the satisfaction that they had spent their fifty Euros wisely, whoever had won.

The rules need tweaking. That’s the answer. Change the rules and reduce the skill needed to put the ball in the back of the net. As Eddy Waring used to say, Well Jim, it’s all about putting the ball in the back of the net. You can see I am drawing on his knowledge of the game.

With this premise, one can imagine widening or raising the goal, or both. Or if a normal size goal is too hard a target, then get rid of the goalie. Wait…and give all players inside the penalty area the ability to touch the ball and do goalie dives and stuff. What a lot of fun that would be!

I am not saying I have the perfect solution. It’s just that someone needs to burst the rules that are constraining the game. You could have two footballs in play, for instance. Players and spectators would have to keep their eyes on two moving objects. And if you see active sports as analogous to war or hunting, that is closer to a battlefield or wood full of wild boar. Life is complex and rule setting for a game, is no more than reducing the variables of life to make activity simple and measurable.

So come on football! For all the interest that you generate internationally and all the money that swills around, go back to basics. Have good look at what you are doing. Be open to the idea that perhaps, just perhaps – as my games teacher used to write on my school reports – you could do better.