The Olympic legacy could be the death of football.

Before the Olympics started I have to say that I wasn't really caught up in all the hype and expectations that surrounded the games. However as the days went by and Team GB's medal haul began to grow it was difficult not to get swept along with the tide of good feeling that spread across the nation. What particularly struck me was how well spoken and gracious both in victory and defeat all the athletes were. However when the closing ceremony ended I didn't really think I'd miss the Games. I wouldn't lose sleep over not being able to see people doing sports that I know little or nothing about, would I? Well not until the football season kicked off.

Suddenly the sporting perfection, sportsmanship, camaraderie and humbleness that was seen in London was put into true perspective by the (mostly) sub human scum who jog around professional football pitches every weekend. In the 1st week alone of major European domestic league action; Newcastle's manager had pushed a linesman, Juventus' title winning manager was banned for match fixing, Robin Van Persie joined Arsenal's rivals Man Utd all for a few extra bob a week, and Rangers were relegated because they were formerly owned by a crook.

Yes it really hit home. Was I really going to have to go back to watching cheating, moaning, overpaid, thankless, yobs after having been treated to one of the best sporting highlights that I have ever seen? Well I know one thing for sure, however difficult it may be to not get drawn into the Premier League saga in England I will try my damnedest not to!

Hopefully a few people within football's governing bodies will have been affected in the same have, and if they weren't then they should have been. I don't think I'm alone with being disillusioned by football in its current state. Our national side is barely followed outside of major tournaments and England fans were hardly rushing to travel to Poland and the Ukraine for the Euros, the Olympic football team fell flat on their faces but no one cared, and I believe it will only be a matter of time before interest in the Premier League begins to wane as well.

How can any fan possibly feel an allegiance to, or bond with any of today's football clubs. My team for example, Hull City, have become nothing but a feeder club for Premier League teams, so every six months the team sheet dramatically changes as loan players are switched back and forth just as fans were beginning to learn about their players. A ticket to watch these hastenly assembled misfits can cost as much as £30. I guarantee that you could go and watch an athletics meeting, a cycling race, an amateur boxing event, and any other Olympic featured sport for less than that.

Football fans need to wake up! They are being fleeced and yet they happily go back time and again just to show their 'loyalty'. What they must now ask themselves is whether these teams and their players are actually worth any sort of loyalty let alone hard earned cash.

This isn't the only thing that fans should be asking themselves. The Olympics also brought home to me that sport is something that's there to be done not just watched. Many people round the country will no doubt be riding a new bike and growing Wiggins-esque side burns this autumn, a lot of folk will be dusting off their running shoes and pounding some pavements. However because the Premier League doesn't promote the true values of 11 a side football 11 a side teams are actually dwindling in number across the country. Let me tell you now when you have the option to play a game for real or to watch it you should always play. Don't listen to Sky Sports telling to you to catch every game of the season, don't listen to the clubs trying to steal half your weekly wage for gate receipts, take a step back and think what else could I be doing with my time. Do I really want my kids to grow up with Suarez, Rooney, and Barton as their idols?

For me the London Olympics' true legacy will have been that people saw for just two weeks how sports should be contested. There must be alot of people doing some soul searching in football grounds up and down the land, as they're faced with a league that sold its soul and whose legacy could well be the beginning of the end for the beautiful game.    

telling the truth, cameras, and apologies!

I have to admit that leading up to last nights World Cup qualifier between France and Ireland I was devoid of any real biased towards one of the teams. By the end of the match though I felt like I had become born again Irish and that consequently I needed to commit an atrocity to Thierry Henry's vital organs. No I'm not even exaggerating. Henry's Micheal Jordan impersonation had Nicksportsrant fuming. Then I nearly vomited when Henry was interviewed and insisted that he didn't mean to do it and that it was all the referees fault.

Before I layout what I think can be done in instances like this I just want to express how I view Thierry Henry as a Football player and a person. Only a truly self absorbed, egotistical and classless human being could come out and make the comments that this once great footballer made after the final whistle. Never mind that its the referees decision to make. There was one man on that field who could have made things right and that was Thierry Henry. At least when Zinadine Zidane let himself down by head butting Marco Materazzi he did it because of the Italians foul mouthed abuse. For me Zidane is still the best Footballer of my generation. Thierry Henry has now tainted his reputation forever.

The title of this blog encapsulates (in my opinion) what should happen before, during ,and after an incident like this. Allow me to explain each point in the order they are written. Firstly the referee should have to by (footballing law) immediately ask the player guilty of the alleged offense if he indeed handled the ball. The player should then tell the referee the truth. If the player is still adamant that he is innocent of foul play then a television replay should be used by the fourth official. If the player in question is guilty he is sent off for cheating, and if not then play continues normally.

I would then go one step further as well. Along with the suspension and fine that players already receive I would force a public apology. Can you imagine Henry squirming around wishing he had a nippy little Clio to Va Va Voom him away from the glare of the camera awaiting his confession.

I believe that this three pronged approach to dealing with cheating (that could be used to counter diving as well) would appease both the purists who don't want to see technology interrupt the flow of play, and also those in the game who wish to see technology introduced.

Lets be honest by the time the Irish had stopped complaining and the French had hid their blushes there would have been enough time to evaluate the weekends weather as well as the hand ball. By giving the player a chance to admit his guilt, all the technology could be by passed and the game could continue freely.

Lastly it surprises me that its just the Irish who are demanding a replay of the game. Surely the French with their 'O so proud and honest' image would welcome the chance to replay the game and truly earn their passage to the World Cup. Unfortunately all we can hope for is that France receive some Karma at the World Cup, because FIFA and Platini got what they wanted all long and to lose both Russia and France would have been unthinkable for them.

Free to view or not to view? that is the question.

Lets face it, with the England Football team already qualified for the World Cup and very little else happening in the world of sport, this week has been a bit of a write off for Nickssportrant. Of course other nations were involved in meaningful World Cup qualification campaigns but when you don't hail from those countries its just difficult to get excited about a team that's not your own. Whilst I was sitting in the pub, watching the Irish worry a lacklustre Italian team, I wondered to myself why I was not watching England? It is not often that an England supporter can sit back, hands behind his or her head, and relax safe in the knowledge that he or she can celebrate whatever the outcome of a Qualification game may be.

Surely this is no way to build momentum before the World Cup. For the first time in a long long while this England team look dedicated to the cause and play with a real sense of purpose and drive. So what better way to eradicate the aura surrounding the team than to leave them stranded in the Ukraine with only a handful of hardcore fans able to watch via a dodgy Internet site or illegally streamed Turkish TV. Finally we have a team to be proud of and then the public isn't able to watch them play.

The Official England fan club was equally annoyed at the decision to only screen the match online and suggested that a rule should be made whereby the rights to International fixtures could only be sold to free to view television companies. There aren't really any true free to air channels any more. BBC has its license fee and sky and the rest of course all cost money. The issue is instead that rights to matches should not be allowed to be sold to Internet only channels. Firstly their picture quality is poor, secondly their coverage is poor, thirdly they restrict how many people can view the match in question. Only 1 million people were able to watch online (only 500 thousand did 200 thousand of whom were the armed forces who got it free) due to picture quality issues stemming from too many people using the live feed.

Maybe once Internet technology is up to scratch this will be the way forward in the future, but for now the FA should do more to insist that matches are screened on TV.

This is an isolated situation brought about by Setanta going bust, Football fans have little to worry about when it comes to watching the sport they love. Other sports though are really feeling the pinch of the recession and its effect on TV stations unwillingness to screen costly sporting events.

I am a great fan of boxing and am finding it increasingly difficult to watch all the fights I want to. The latest is Carl Froch's first fight in the 'Super 6 Boxing Tournament'. Froch will be fighting in front of 10,000 people on Saturday and yet the only place that will be showing the fight is little known and difficult to access satellite channel 'PrimeTime'. I'm sure that other sports must be suffering as well.

Sports fans must just hope that channels are saving their money for the World Cup next summer and that after this we can once again be spoiled with easily accessible and good to watch coverage of the sports we love. Channels also need to do a little more to support sports that could well become increasingly popular after the 2012 Olympics. Boxing is one of these. Surely a little investment now would pay off once the Olympics have come around.

Fake wrestling or Rugby?

It would have been easy for me to jump on the band wagon today and just blab on about violence at football rearing its ugly head. Instead though I thought I would resist this urge and talk about a sport that I don't always follow as closely as others, Rugby Union.

'Blood Gate' as it has been so unwitily named has become big news in Rugby circles, so I thought I'd look into it. Having done so I was shocked. Basically Harlequins Rugby team wanted to make a substitution but couldn't because of a ruling within the game that prevented them from doing so. However in the case of a player being injured they would be able to make the substitution. So the coaching staff, having made a trip to the local joke shop before the match, gave a blood capsule to the player they wanted to bring off and made him bite it making it look as though he had a cut in his mouth. To make it even worse the physio then cut the players mouth in the changing room to make the injury look real!

Having grown up in a Rugby mad town 'Driffield' I was constantly being told that being a footballer made me girly, chavesque, soft and a cheat (due to its diving culture). I was also told that rugby (unlike football) was a sport for hard honest men.

There is no doubt that the men that play this sport are tough, but their integrity has been irreparably damaged by this scandal. What makes it worse though is that people within the game refuse to label those involved as cheats.

Ben Coen (England International) when interviewed by Sky Sports merely said that "these things happen" and then even worse "there are probably all sorts of things like this that haven't been brought to light yet". Wow OK so even though this scandal has been dealt with there are still a few to come! Phil Greening on the same network went even further to say that Tom Williams' (the player who used the blood capsule) ban was ridiculous. The main culprit Dean Richards put the icing on the cake though when he was quoted as saying that he thought his own three year world wide coaching ban was harsh!

I think the problem is, that those within the game seem to see this as a simple bending of the rules; unfortunately to an outside observer it looks like this particular rule has been bent and then snapped.

So when did this go from being a rule bend to outright cheating? In my opinion it was when a foreign object was brought onto the field and that this foreign object had been sanctioned for use by the player's coach and team. Other examples would be when the England cricket team were caught using sticky sweets to make the ball swing more, or a boxer injecting mercury into his gloves to make them heavier.

The problem for Rugby players is that this distinction is not easy for them to make. The whole game is about pushing boundaries. Stamping, punching, fighting and biting are widely recognised as being part of the game but all are banned by the sports rules. So why not blood capsules? Basically with Rugby Union turning professional there is now so much at stake that players and coaches will do anything to win, even if it means turning to theatrical blood more often associated with Hulk Hogan than rugby players.

I respect Rugby players and their play to win ethic, but they must be careful that they don't overstep the mark and end up making the same mistake that football made with issues like diving and feigning injury. Both these issues were badly dealt with by football's main governing bodies and has led to both now being 'accepted as part of the game'. Rugby's main attraction to its fans and followers is that it is a man's sport played by hard but honest men. If the governing bodies had not handed out these punishments (which I still think are a bit lax, I see this as being as bad as drugs abuse which would have carried a far heavier ban or fine) then those same fans may as well go and watch men in tights rubbing each other at Wrestle mania.