Dazed & Confused - How the World Cup was a disaster when it came to head injuries

Hats off to Germany. They were the best side throughout the World Cup, and deservedly won what has to have been one of the best tournaments to date. There were some extraordinary games in Brazil between 12 June and 13 July, not least the eventual winners 7-1 thrashing of the hosts. Other classics were Nigeria 2, Argentina 3 and Germany 2, Ghana 2, though of the England team, perhaps the best thing to do is say that young players like Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge showed that we might just have a decent future.

But if Brazil 2014 will go down in history as a great and memorable World Cup, it could have been etched in our minds for the wrong reason. I refer not to what might have happened if Luis Suarez had longer teeth, but to the scant understand shown by match officials and administrators of the dangers of head injuries.

Potentially terrible consequences

Three serious incidents occurred in Brazil which could have had terrible consequences for the players involved. The first came when Uruguay beat England 2-1. Álvaro Pereira, the Uruguay defender, was knocked out in a collision with Sterling's knee. As The Times reported: "The Uruguay medical team were seen calling for his substitution, only to be overruled by the player, underlying their helplessness as occupational health physicians."

Next came Argentina's semi-final win over Holland. The superb Javier Mascherano clashed heads with Georginio Wijnaldum towards the half hour mark and showed clear signs of concussion, wobbling on his feet before slumping to the pitch. In spite this, he was allowed to play on.

Then came perhaps the worst incident of all, played out for all the world to see in the final. Christoph Kramer found himself in Germany's starting line-up (making his competitive debut for his country) after an injury in the warm-up to midfielder Sami Khedira. Early into the game, the young player's head smashed accidentally into an Argentinian player. Kramer was visibly disorientated, but was allowed to play on by Germany's medical staff. Fourteen minutes later, he fell to the ground, and was then substituted.

Boorish Lawrenson

Kramer has subsequently said that he couldn't remember anything of the first half the game. He looked awful as he left the pitch, eyes glazed and with a look of 'where am I and what is happening?' etched all over his features. His departure made for a telling counterpoint to the boorish, old-school tough guy commentary of the BBC's Mark Lawrenson, who was persistently sarcastic at players' injuries throughout the tournament and objected to the Argentinian players calling - sportingly - for the ball to be put out of play when Kramer lay stricken. Lawrenson further demonstrated an apparent ignorance of what happens with head injuries when saying, as Kramer groggily waited to come back on, "He's fine. He's jogging round the pitch now."

Thankfully, albeit that he was taken off looking anything but fine just under quarter of an hour later, Kramer does seem to be fine. So, too, was Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, despite playing on after a head injury last November. Likewise, we hope, Pereira and Mascherano.

But here's the rub: when it comes to head injuries, we just don't know what damage may have been done. And a minute or two of pitchside assessment, when a player has been knocked out or is as visibly awry as Kramer, is woefully inadequate.

Fifpro, the world players' union, has rightly criticised Fifa for failing to protect the players upon which its tournament depends. The union predicts "a tidal wave [of compensation claims] that will engulf" professional football, unless a protocol regarding concussion is adopted as part of the rules of the game. Radically, and yet sensibly, Fifpro also calls for a review of the laws of the game to compensate a team if it goes down to 10 men while a head injury is being assessed.

Prevention is better than cure

And assessment is crucial. We don't want professional football to end up like the NFL in the United States, or the NHL, where significant class action litigation over head injuries is now a fact of life. Not because of bogus objections to people suing for compensation, but because we don't want to see people needlessly injured. The fact is that a head injury can be fatal; it can lead to Second Impact Syndrome, when a later blow on top of the first one leads to brain damage or death.

Proper attention to head injuries is vital. It is essential that Fifa and the game's national governing bodies around the world take action to ensure that prevention is better than cure - for the fundamental reason that when it comes to a head injury, there may well not be a cure.

Let's give thanks to the continuing recovery of Christoph Kramer and his colleagues - and pray that a professional football match is not one day the scene of a fatal head injury because of governing body negligence.

Spare a thought for Theo - and Hillsborough's victims, too

Spare a thought for Theo Walcott. The charismatic and talented Arsenal winger didn't seem to be in too much pain when he fell to the turf in last Saturday's FA Cup third round fixture against Spurs, but the gloss of his team's 2-0 victory has been well and truly dented. Walcott, it transpires, has suffered the injury all footballers dread - a rupture of his anterior cruciate ligament.

None of us who witnessed Walcott's injury, whether at the Emirates or while watching the game on TV, can be said to have been traumatised by what we saw - not least because Walcott seemed in good spirits as he was carried off the pitch on a stretcher. But as we now learn that the on-form Arsenal star is almost certainly ruled out of the England squad for this summer's FIFA World Cup in Brazil, as well as side-lined for the rest of Arsenal's best season in years, only the hardest of heart would not feel sorry for him.

Walcott, included when 17 years old by Sven Goran Eriksson in the 2006 World Cup in Germany but not selected for a game, was omitted by Fabio Capello for his squad in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. His terrible luck continues. Even if, miraculously, he recovers swiftly from the operation on his knee, it would surely be a mistake to take him to Brazil.

The effect of witnessing a traumatic event

Universally popular, at his club and in the England set-up, Walcott deserves and gets our sympathy. And if we play again, in our mind’s eye, the moment of his injury, it seems that bit worse. We see him wince with pain; we feel it that bit more acutely. As human beings, we empathise.

If this is what we feel, as spectators confronted by an injury which isn't as bad as, say, Eduardo Da Silva's horrific leg break, isn't it clear that witnessing disturbing events can lead to psychological harm - harm which may be even longer lasting than the physical damage sustained by those immediately affected?

To me, the answer is a resounding 'yes'. And because of this - and with the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster approaching, on 15 April this year - it is high time that the law on psychiatric injury is revisited.

Case law since Hillsborough does not square with reality

In the wake of Hillsborough case law evolved to a point which does not square with reality. The leading authority is Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 AC 310. Here, Alcock and several other claimants were 'secondary victims': they were not primarily affected, in the sense that they were injured or in danger of injury, but they suffered harm because of what they witnessed. But instead of providing for compensation for their traumatic experiences, the Alcock case, which went all the way to the House of Lords' Judicial Committee, imposed a series of "control mechanisms" to fetter a victim's ability to bring a claim.

Chief among them is the requirement that a claimant must perceive a "shocking event" with his or her own senses, either as an eye-witness or happening upon its immediate aftermath. This means that if a father saw his son crushed via television footage, or if he arrived some 30 minutes after the incident, he would not be able to bring a claim.

Lord Steyn of Mostyn, in Frost v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1999] 2 AC 455 described the law on recovery for psychiatric harm as "a patchwork quilt of distinctions which are difficult to justify". The so-called 'control mechanisms' have also been described as "more or less arbitrary conditions which a plaintiff had to satisfy and which were intended to keep liability within what was regarded as acceptable bounds".

Lord Steyn was right. So, as we spare a thought for Theo Walcott, let's also think of Hillsborough's victims and, indeed, the unjust state of the law, that with which anyone tragically caught up in a disaster will be confronted. It's time to revise the law, it's time to unstitch the patchwork quilt, and it's time for parliament to legislate for change.

We need better education and treatment in sport for concussion – and we need it now

For many years I enjoyed playing amateur football. I was never going to be good enough to emulate my heroes, the likes of Peter Osgood or Alan Hudson, but like so many enthusiastic players up and down the country I loved the game. And, again like so many grass roots players, I look back on a few moments from my playing days and shudder.

My retrospective misgivings aren't from memories of open goals missed (or own goals scored). These things happen; if anything, at amateur level they're to be laughed about in the pub afterwards.

No, my misgivings flow from remembering the times when a player suffered a head injury, usually from a clash of heads as two players competed to head the ball. One player would take a severe knock (sometimes both of them, in fact). He'd be on the turf for what seemed an age, only to stagger to his feet and insist that he was well enough to play on. This was almost always what happened. Only rarely did a player on the receiving end of a head injury leave the field of play. Time and again he'd wear his palpable concussion like a badge of honour, and keep going to the end of the game.

Concussion can be fatal

I look back on these incidents and shudder because I realise that collective ignorance – or, perhaps, machismo - had the effect of putting a sportsman's life at risk.

The fact is that concussion can be fatal. It can kill soon after the first signs manifest themselves, or it can kill later in life when the consequence of repeated trauma to the head turns into CTE - chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE was formerly known as dementia pugilistica - 'the boxer's disease' - but increasingly studies are revealing that is present in sportspeople from other sports, including American football and ice hockey.

And, as Andy Bull's excellent article in last Sunday's Observer reveals, rugby.  In modern rugby, the dangers of concussion have grown exponentially as the game has evolved, as Bull elegantly puts it, "from a contact sport to a collision sport." Concussion was always a danger in rugby (as it was in football) but today's players are better conditioned than those of yesteryear. Players are bigger, faster, stronger – and they hit a lot harder than they used to. Tackles are now "hits", and YouTube is full of  "greatest hits" from both rugby union and league. But to view, say, this collection of "hits" is not simply an exercise in admiring the bravery of the contemporary player. It is also to come away wholly endorsing the argument in Bull's article: that a sea-change is required in rugby so that players' lives and health are not unnecessarily risked by the modern game's relentless ferocity.

Bull has also written of the tragic story of 14-year-old Ben Robinson, who, on 29 January 2011, was treated on three occasions for blows to the head while playing rugby – and on each occasion sent back onto the pitch to play on. Ben later collapsed and died in hospital in a case of Second Impact Syndrome (SIS). SIS means that the brain swells swiftly and catastrophically after a person suffers a second concussion before symptoms from an earlier one have subsided. SIS is nearly always fatal; if it isn't, it leads to permanent serious disability.

Change has to come from the top

Arguably, today's rugby culture killed poor Ben Robinson, the culture of hitting hard and playing on. SIS certainly killed him. SIS could have caused terrible problems for Hugo Lloris, the Spurs goalkeeper allowed to play on against Everton in a November fixture, and it will continue to cause terrible problems for any number of sportspeople until we succeed in implementing a root and branch change to the way that we regard head injuries in sport.

Head injuries aren't a 'laugh'. It's not amusing to see a player wobble unsteadily, then regain his senses, then play on. It's not a tribute to his fortitude. It's foolhardy. The risks are too great, and, as Dr James Robson, the Scottish rugby union side's chief medical officer, says (in Bull's Observer piece): "When you get a subject as important as this [change] has to come from the top. To me that means the government. They are responsible for the nation's health and that is what we are talking about, the health of the nation's young people." 

Dr Robson is right. So come on, Mr Cameron, what have you got to say? If you could tear yourself away from taking selfies (and worrying about what happens to them) and tweeting about Nigella, perhaps you could endorse the calls for thorough education and treatment in sport for concussion. Those calls, to anyone with any sense, are irresistible. 

When it comes to head injuries in sport, we can learn a lot from looking to America

Hugo Lloris returned to the Tottenham Hotspur line-up on Sunday, but not to the kind of game he'd have liked. The Frenchman has been in the wars lately, with a controversial head injury in his team's fixture against Everton on 3 November. The last thing he would have wanted was to be on the end of a 6-0 drubbing by an effervescent Manchester City frontline.

But at least Lloris was fit to play. Too often, this is not the fate of sportspeople who suffer head injuries. The tragic example of American high school football player Charles Youvella is a case in point. Just over two weeks ago, Youvella died after sustaining a head injury while playing a game in the Arizona Interscholastic Association.

By all accounts a brave and talented player, Youvella's injury came in a Saturday night game, when he was felled by what witnesses described as a 'routine football tackle'. Routine it may have been, but the back of the young man's head hit the ground with considerable velocity. Two days later, on Monday 11 November, Youvella was dead of a traumatic brain injury - notwithstanding, in uncomfortable echoes of the Lloris incident, the fact that immediately after the initial impact he got to his feet and lined up for two more plays.

High stakes

Terrible, premature deaths like Youvella's remind us of the high stakes in many sports, from football, whether American or in the form of 'soccer', to rugby, horse-racing and boxing.

No one would seek to ban people from taking part in sport, the upsides of which embrace an individual's health and sense of self-respect and have a wider societal benefit in fostering discipline, camaraderie and teamwork.

But in many things America shows the way - and last August the National Football League agreed to a $765m (£478) out-of-court settlement with a group of former players who had sued the league for, as The Guardian put it, "its role in hiding or underplaying the effects of brain trauma in the game, while glorifying its violence, a cover-up which has been exposed in a series of recent books and documentaries." Happily - in a development that we should applaud - Microsoft co-founder and Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen last week announced that he will fund a two-year, $2.4 million study into whether repeated blows to the head can lead to dementia.

American football is not only sport in the spotlight for its alleged laissez-faire attitude to head injuries. Just this week, 10 players from the National Hockey League began legal proceedings against the league for negligence and fraud, alleging that the sport’s officials should have done more to address head injuries but instead celebrated a culture of speed and violence.

Too robust?

Could the same thing happen here? British sporting culture prides itself on being robust, on taking the knocks and getting up and playing on. But 'being robust' can have deadly consequences. Hugo Lloris was, thankfully, lucky; the next footballer encouraged to play on after a head injury might not be.

The key message is that prevention is better than cure - especially when it comes to brain injuries. We must remain vigilant and astute to the dangers of 'getting on with it'; so too must we keep a watchful eye on medical developments in this complex area. And, looking across the pond, we could sensibly take a leaf out of Paul Allen's book - at the same time as hoping that British sportspeople don't find themselves forced to take class actions to achieve recompense for traumatic head injuries.

All's not well that ends well when there's a risk of serious brain damage. Spurs were wrong to let Hugo Lloris play on

"It's OK. I'm fine. I want to carry on."

These words are often heard by boxers when they've come round after a KO punch. Whether the fighter is out for just a few seconds, or a matter of minutes, his instinct is almost invariably to fight on.

In fact, the boxer's brain and nervous system have been scrambled so much that he doesn't even realise that the referee has stopped the fight. The minutes of unconsciousness are precisely that. They're lost forever. There's no getting the time back, there are no memories to retrieve. To be 'out cold' hints at just how much damage has been done by the KO blow: after all, we're at our coldest when we’re dead.

A disturbing response

As a lifelong football fan, only rarely have I seen head injuries of the kind that boxing fans often witness. But last Sunday's game between Tottenham Hotspur and Everton yielded one. And the way it was dealt with cannot but be disturbing.

Huge Lloris, the Spurs goalkeeper, was knocked out when challenging for the ball against the onrushing Everton striker Romelu Lukaku. To view the footage on YouTube is to see that Lukaku's knee clatters forcefully into Lloris's head. The velocity must have been easily the same as a boxer landing his best punch.

No wonder, then, that Lloris was rendered unconscious. There is doubt as to whether the goalkeeper lost consciousness completely or suffered a 'transient' alteration of consciousness but what is abundantly clear is that he took several minutes to recover. But astonishingly, and despite his French keeper's unsteady feet when he was finally able to stand up, the Spurs manager Andre Villas-Boas did not substitute Lloris. He had a very able deputy in Brad Friedel, but decided to let his injured goalkeeper play on - mindful, perhaps, of Football Association guidelines to the effect that a merely 'transient' alteration of consciousness does not mean a player cannot return to play.

Villas-Boas also elected to ignore the obvious concerns of his captain, Michael Dawson, who appeared to try to persuade Lloris to go off after he got to his feet. "He took a really bad whack and I was worried when he went down and stayed down," said Dawson. "When he got up his legs gave way, but he stayed on and made two good saves. I lead those boys but safety is the most important thing. He was in a bad way, but, by the time he came around, he was wanting to stay on."

All's not well that ends well

So, was all well that ended well? Hardly. Spurs' decision has rightly attracted much criticism, not least from the brain injury charity Headway. Its spokesman, Luke Griggs, had this to say:

"When a player - or any individual - suffers a blow to the head that is severe enough for them to lose consciousness, it is vital they urgently seek appropriate medical attention. A physio or doctor treating a player on the pitch simply cannot accurately gauge the severity of the damage caused to the player's brain in such a setting as there may be delayed presentation of symptoms." And yet more tellingly: "By continuing to play, the player may have caused greater damage to his brain. He should have been removed from the game immediately and taken to hospital for thorough tests and observation."

Headway chief executive Peter McCabe also commented on Spurs' decision here.

Happily for Lloris, it seems that subsequent scans show that he has emerged unscathed from the clash with Lukaku. But, quite rightly, the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) says that players should be automatically removed from the pitch should they suffer "a severe trauma" to the head that causes a loss of consciousness. So, too, do players' union FifPro and world governing body Fifa.

Those calling for caution are correct. Spurs behaved in a cavalier fashion in letting their player continue. In such circumstances, just like a KO'd boxer, the decision is not the player's; it is the club's. The club should not have taken the risk of Lloris potentially being concussed and suffering serious brain injury.

In boxing, a KO'd boxer is not allowed to fight again for at least 28 days from the date of the KO. Villas-Boas could still set the right example by giving Friedel the nod and resting Lloris for 28 days. But the odds that this will happen must be very long indeed.

The Alcock judgment: a patchwork quilt that needs to be unstitched

The intensity of last Saturday's football match between Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea was palpable even to those listening to it on the radio, let alone the fans present at White Hart Lane. This was a classic London derby, a game of pulsating action and plenty of bite. Everyone who saw the two sides compete for a hard-fought 1-1 draw would agree that this was football at its most visceral and unforgettable.

After the game, I reflected on football's ability to leave a mark. What happens on the pitch becomes etched in our collective memory, imprinted forever in our consciousness. No doubt the game's inherent theatre, its speed and its competitiveness are reasons for this.

Hillsborough case law on psychiatric injury

But, as the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster looms at the end of the current season, it is important to recall that sporting events can leave a mark for different reasons. And, when it comes to Hillsborough, it is a regret to note that the law on psychiatric injury is both unsatisfactory and borne of what we now know to be erroneous assumptions about what happened at Sheffield Wednesday's historic ground on 15 April, 1989.

At Hillsborough that day, 96 fans died in a terrible crush early on in an FA Cup Semi-Final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. The crush resulted in injuries to a further 766 people. Those involved ranged from children to the elderly. The tragic incident is Britain's worst-ever stadium-related disaster.

Appalling misinformation appeared in the public domain just hours after the disaster. It grew worse and worse, as the police sought to blame fans for what happened rather than take any responsibility themselves. The Sun newspaper famously poured oil on troubled waters with a front page splash that only its then-editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, believed in. MacKenzie's story, headlined 'The Truth', was a vicious libel on Liverpool fans, and rightly led to The Sun being all but boycotted in Liverpool .

The real truth

But the old saying is that the truth will out - and soon enough it did. The Taylor Report, published in 1990, found that the main reason for the disaster was a failure of police control. Lord Taylor's inquiry also led to Liverpool's fans receiving their first official exoneration - and to the police being roundly criticised for lying and evasiveness. Later, in September 2012, came the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. This categorically found that no Liverpool fans were responsible for the deaths, and said that attempts had been made by the authorities to conceal what happened, including the alteration by police of 116 statements relating to the disaster.

Against all this a number of fans and their families rightly sought redress for their sufferings because of Hillsborough. Indeed, the disaster went on to spawn what remains, to this day, the leading authority in domestic case law on psychiatric injury. That case is Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 AC 310. Here, Alcock and several other claimants were what the law describes as ‘secondary victims’: they were not primarily affected, in the sense that they were injured or in danger of injury, but they suffered harm because of what they witnessed.

Rewind to what I said at the beginning of this piece. Football is an intense, visceral spectacle, conducted as mass participation theatre. How awful must it have been for those who saw their loved ones at risk, injured or even killed in the Hillsborough disaster?

Alcock needs unstitching

It seems obvious that the effect of what they saw would have been profound and damaging. But the Alcock case, which went all the way to the House of Lords Judicial Committee, imposed a series of  "control mechanisms" to fetter a victim's ability to bring a claim. If these "control mechanisms" are not met, there is no duty of care, and therefore no possibility of a claim for negligence. Chief among them is the requirement that a claimant must perceive a "shocking event" with his or her own senses, either as an eye-witness or happening upon its immediate aftermath. This means that if a father saw his son crushed via television footage, or if he arrived some 30 minutes after the incident, he would not be able to bring a claim.

Lord Steyn of Mostyn has described the law on recovery for psychiatric harm as "a patchwork quilt of distinctions which are difficult to justify". In another judgment (Frost v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1999] 2 AC 455), Lord Hoffman said that "the search for principle was called off [in Alcock]". The "control mechanisms" were "more or less arbitrary conditions which a plaintiff had to satisfy and which were intended to keep liability within what was regarded as acceptable bounds". Into the bargain, they are more or less impossible to understand by the ordinary man.

The 'ordinary man' - and woman - are the people who were at Hillsborough nearly 25 years ago, they were at White Hart Lane on Saturday and they attend football matches up and down the country week in, week out. The House of Lords has stated that it can go no further than the principles articulated in Alcock, dubious as they are. Only Parliament can legislate for change.

Against what we now know to be the truth of Hillsborough, it is high time that we revisit Alcock. It seems more than possible that its principles were informed by the extraordinary level of misinformation dominating the media and political agendas at the time. It is time for this particular patchwork quilt to be unstitched and put back together in a way that offers real justice for victims of psychiatric injury.

Hats off to The Spireites. Here’s to a promotion-winning season - and meaningful grappling with Derbyshire's asbestos problem

Hats off to Chesterfield FC. By all accounts the club's away fixture at Rochdale last Saturday was a thriller. It ended in a 2-2 draw, with Marc Richards and Gary Roberts on the scoresheet for The Spireites. Good work especially by Roberts, who also set up the opening goal by Richards.

Spencers is proud to sponsor Chesterfield FC's community stand. Football is important to communities up and down the country: it's part of the fabric of our daily lives, giving a focus and sense of identity to thousands of fans. Wouldn't it be fantastic if The Spireites, under the guidance of manager Paul Cook, can maintain their excellent form at the beginning of the season and secure promotion to League One? So far, so good, with the team unbeaten in three games and sitting nicely in third place in the League Two table.

A long, hard season looms, but the sense in the town is that the talent is there, so too the commitment and dedication needed to mount a promotion push. And Derbyshire's largest town certainly has the stadium for an upper tier football club. The Proact Stadium, with a capacity of 10,504 (roughly the same as newly promoted Yeovil Town, currently adjusting to life in the Championship), is as good as they come. It's easily capable of hosting Championship games - which is where the club aims to be.

Chesterfield could do with a success story. Derbyshire could, too. There is so much to commend about the county's market town and Derbyshire itself, but the area is not without its problems. In particular, heavy industrialism has left a dangerous legacy. I am thinking of the so-called 'hidden killer' - asbestos.

Derbyshire Asbestos Support Team

The problem of asbestos in many public buildings, homes and schools has been revealed by the excellent campaigning work of the Derbyshire Asbestos Support Team. In particular, in July 2011 it displayed a life size model of a house - showing where asbestos could be found in an average house - in New Square in Chesterfield. Colleagues of mine well remember the house (created as part of Mesothelioma Action Day) and the way in which it captivated the interest of passers-by. The charity continues to do its best to publicise the dangers posed by asbestos, not least in our schools.

Management of asbestos in schools is, indeed, a serious worry. Many experts regard its management as inadequate. There is concern that governors have little awareness, understanding or training in managing asbestos. Local authorities are supposed to have individual plans per school and yet many have one for all schools. There is the question of who is responsible in schools outside local authority control, many of which are unaware of the liability they are taking on in regard to asbestos. There is an overall lack of transparency and availability of data. Surely every parent has the right to know of the existence of asbestos in their child's school, and how the known risks it poses are managed? This seems self-evident, and yet the government continues to drag its feet on the problem of asbestos, lagging a long way behind the excellent model for its treatment in Australia.

Some of Chesterfield's children of today may one day don the blue shirts of The Spireites. Here's hoping that when they do, the club is plying its trade in the Championship. And that by then, the government has at last got its house in order when it comes to asbestos.

In praise of ethics in sport

The football season seems to start earlier each year. I'm sure, when I was a boy, that games didn't start in early August, as they have for all of England’s professional and semi-professional leagues bar the Premier League. My memory might be playing tricks on me but one thing is certain: this weekend sees the beginning of another season of Premier League football.

Hot on the heels of an excellent, thoroughly enjoyable England v Scotland game on Wednesday, I'm hoping that this season's Premier League fixtures will be played in a similar spirit. On Wednesday night, the ancient football foes contested a hard-fought game with skill and passion in equal measure. There were one or two feisty moments, as is only to be expected in competitive fixtures, but what especially struck me about the game was the absence of any malice or cheating. I don't recall seeing any players diving to the turf as if felled by an axe; nor do I remember clusters of aggrieved individuals surrounding the referee and trying to intimidate him into giving a decision their way.

England v Scotland was a tough, dynamic game; it was football as it should be. On Sunday, I'll be watching my club, Chelsea, when they host newly promoted Hull City. Or rather, as they are now known, Hull City Tigers. Quite why the new name was required is beyond me; likewise, I don't understand why one of the other promoted teams, Cardiff City, elected to stop playing in their traditional all-blue strip and play in red.

Doubtless there is some marketing rationale for both changes. And lately, reading Rob Steen's excellent 1995 book The Mavericks: English Football When Flair Wore Flairs, I'm reminded of the era of greats like Peter Osgood, Alan Hudson, Charlie George, Stan Bowles and Rodney Marsh. The book brilliantly evokes their time as players, and is all the more intriguing with its accounts of how flair players dealt with the likes of Ron 'Chopper' Harris and Norman 'Bites Yer Legs' Hunter. Often enough, they gave as good as they got.

Football today is faster and more tactically complex than it was when the mavericks graced the pitches with their fancy footwork. But while the game has evolved, it has, in a sense, lost something. Rob Steen's book is a portrait of a more honest game than we see today. Players would try to gain an advantage by bending the rules, but somehow what they did strikes me as more ethical than the players of the modern game who feign injury and harangue officials. This sort of behaviour is doubtless a consequence of the vastly greater sums of money at stake in football now but there is no excuse for it. It demeans the game and those who play it.

Needless to say, I'll be hoping for a Chelsea win on Sunday. I also wish Hull City Tigers well in their new Premier League incarnation. But as much as I hope for Chelsea success, I hope that maybe, just maybe, this season we will have the privilege of watching games like England v Scotland: hard-fought, competitive and with no quarter given, but with a fundamental honesty. Ethics, in sport, are just as important as they are in other walks of life.

The Endless Winter

When, oh when, is this winter going to end? Spring is supposed to be here but if there are any green shoots to be seen they're obscured by snow in many parts of Britain. The bad weather is quite extraordinary, and scuppered something that two of my colleagues had been looking forward to on the weekend - their taking to the pitch at Chesterfield football club.

As I've previously written, Spencers is delighted to have agreed a sponsorship deal for Chesterfield FC. Last Saturday, my colleagues Rob Landman and Lee Foster were due to meet the club's chief executive, Chris Turner, on the pitch at the Proact Stadium. Rob and Lee are football fans, and walking on to the pitch at half time during Chesterfield's game against Plymouth Argyle, where they would then confirm Spencers as sponsors of the community stand in an announcement to the club's supporters, was something they were both excited about.

It wasn't to be. As Rob tells me: "The game was a victim of the weather. Heavy snow meant that it was cancelled on Saturday morning, a few hours before kick off. We felt really sorry for everyone, but especially Plymouth's players and fans. They'd come an awfully long way, and probably had no way of getting home, so bad was the weather."

Rob and Lee are now looking forward to Chesterfield's derby game against Bradford City on 13 April as their next date to take to the pitch. Here's hoping that winter has, by then, at last given way to spring.

What price Chesterfield FC one day playing in the Premier League?

The odds are probably long. Chesterfield football club may have been in existence, in one form or another, since 1866, but in that time the Derbyshire team have not once played in the top flight. And yet, look at Swansea City. Under Michael Laudrup, Swansea play some of the best football in Britain, and are set for the Europa League next season after their League Cup success. Just ten years ago Swansea narrowly avoided relegation to the Football Conference. Who's to say that Chesterfield won't follow in Swansea's footsteps?

Giving something back

Time will tell, but in the short term I'm delighted to announce that Spencers Solicitors is now one of Chesterfield’s sponsors. Hats off to my colleagues, Rob Landman and Lee Foster, who have worked tirelessly to bring about what I think is a great step for the firm.

Chesterfield is the site of our principal office, and it's where we've been, in one guise or another, for the past 35 years. Getting involved with the town's football club gives us a chance to get to know the local people all the better, and to put something back, not least because of the sterling community work undertaken by the club. To that end, we've sponsored the Community Stand - the hub of Chesterfield's community work.

We've agreed sponsorship for a three year term. On 23 March, before Chesterfield's home game against Plymouth Argyle, Rob and Lee will take to the pitch at half time to meet the club's chief executive Chris Turner, who will announce the deal.

Hope springs eternal

As football fans, we're all very excited about linking up with a professional club. Regular readers of my blog will know that I'm a Chelsea fan, but as much as I looked out for The Blues' result against Manchester United last weekend I also kept an eye out for how The Spireites fared. They did well, with a solid 2-0 home win over Bristol Rovers. Currently occupying a mid-table position, with 50 points, a good run of form may yet see manager Paul Cook's team reach the play-offs. Indeed, as he put it: "It's mathematically possible to go up with nine games to go, why can't I believe? I believe every day."

Chesterfield's most notable recent successes came in the 1990s. Back then, they won the Division Three play-off final at Wembley in 1995; two years later, they reached the FA Cup semi-finals. In doing so they became the first club outside the top two divisions to reach this stage of the competition since Plymouth Argyle's famous 1984 cup run, beating Premier League Nottingham Forest along the way before eventually losing a semi-final replay to Middlesbrough.  This was a case so near, and yet so far: a thrilling first semi-final ended 3-3, before The Spireites lost the replay 3-0.

More recently, Chesterfield won the 2010-11 Football League Two title, to add to two previous triumphs in the old Fourth Division. The club was also the Johnstone's Paint Trophy winner in 2011-12.

In finalising the sponsorship deal I also visited the club. Its ground, the Proact Stadium, is impressive, as are the facilities overall. The Proact Stadium has a capacity of 10,400, and the club kindly offered Spencers the use of it for a game once the real business of the football season is over. I'm not sure who we'll play, but I'm sure we'll take up this excellent offer. Meantime, wouldn't it be wonderful to see the stadium full to the rafters, with fans enjoying promotion success?

This may not come this year, but hope springs eternal among football supporters and I will join all those who pray that Chesterfield win the majority of their nine remaining games and secure a play-off place. But if not, there is always next season - and the next, and the next, and the next again, until one day, who knows, top flight football becomes a reality. And if you don't believe me, just ask the fans of Swansea City. In football, dreams can still come true.

Deliberate handball or not, cheating is wrong

Regular readers will appreciate that perhaps two or three times a year I stray 'off piste', as it were, with the content of my blog. Forgive me, this is one such occasion - and once again football is responsible. This time, though, it raises a question that dovetails with many other themes aired on this blog.

On the back of the latest controversy involving Luis Suarez, I want to ask: what sort of society do we inhabit when the actions of the Liverpool player are lauded as professional?

I refer, of course, to the striker's handball in last Sunday's FA Cup Third Round tie against Mansfield Town. Suarez took a fine pass from Stewart Downing in his stride and shot on goal, only for his shot to be blocked by a Mansfield defender. However, Suarez never gives up and kept running - so much so that the rebound came his way. Into his right hand's way, that is. Having controlled the ball with his hand, it fell kindly in his path, enabling the player to smash the ball into the bet.

Deliberate or not?

Was it deliberate? It seems that the match officials thought not. They felt that this was a case of accidental handball, of ball to hand rather than hand to ball. Suarez's goal stood, and Liverpool went 2-0 up. They went on to win the tie 2-1 despite valiant efforts by their non-league opponents.

After the match there was plenty of condemnation of Suarez. But leaving aside what only Suarez can know (whether his action was deliberate or not), I found the verdict of a number of seasoned former footballers extraordinary. The majority suggested that Suarez had no obligation to own up to having cheated – if, indeed, that is what he did. Their view was that as a 'professional', Suarez was duty-bound to do the best for his team, so that even if he had cheated his duty was to keep quiet - to get away with it if he could

This brings to mind the 'professional foul' in football, that which is cynically inflicted but which everyone who watches the game seems to accept is a natural part of its fabric.

For football, read the professions

Why should it be? Why should we allow the so-called 'Beautiful Game' to have ugliness at its heart? And what does it mean for society when the country's most popular game either blatantly, at worst, or tacitly, at best, condones cheating?

There is a parallel here with professionalism in other walks of life, notably law and politics. Too often, we appear to turn a blind eye to breaches of ethical codes and rules. It seems that we only object when something is outrageously bad - or when a journalist exposes the truth. As in football, it is almost as if we expect a degree of cheating. This cannot be right. For football as much as the professional sector, the highest standards of fair play and ethical rigour should prevail.

I appreciate that there will be other equally legitimate views on this vexed topic, and would welcome hearing these, as well of course as any more supportive views.