We Create our own "News" Of The World.

There's a lot to be said about the relationship between the British press, sport and its stars. Frequently the press talk up our chances of success at every level only to smack it down again until its grovelling in remorse, when the pressures and goals they've created don't come to fruition.

This however for me isn't the biggest problem at the moment, the press are now so eager to sell papers or gain exposure they are willing to wait until the most damaging, inappropriate or in their case appropriate time to release these stories. Now not only does sport and its stars have to worry about what their doing wrong, they have to worry about when everyone will find out, now not only are the press waiting for the expectations they created to fall apart, they actually want our hero's to do it and on their clock at that.

It's as if someone is paying them to sabotage our chances of success or sour the names of sports we love, ever since the media over reaction to John Terry's private life or if you look further back Sven's, sport has often played second fiddle to off the field activities. Far to frequently this has been the case and the end result has eventually negatively impacted our chances of the success the back pages promised us, and yes the whole round reciprocal nature of the press can make you physically sick. Firstly they tell us we are going to win (the world cup), then they create a scenario whereby this is even more difficult (John Terry's captaincy and Capello being forced to act on it) then they lambaste our stars when the success doesn't occur (Rooney), then they do it all over again.

They literally do it all over again, just as England appear to have turned a corner with their 4-0 win over Bulgaria topped off with three and a half Assists for Wayne, the back and front pages are you guessed it, covered with an alleged affair carried out by Wayne Rooney with a hooker during his wife's pregnancy, just days before another important international fixture, to the extent whereas the FA had to confirm that Rooney was travelling with the England squad. This cannot be good for Wayne and cannot be good for England but if it sells papers, who cares about England success.... oh its the papers themselves that will again attack Rooney if he under performs on Tuesday night. Whilst the behaviour in his private life may not be ideal, it is after all his private life and his whole credibility as a role model wouldn't be ruined if the press kept his private life private. Dizzy yet?

A small side note to this is the publicity that has been created during the recent spot betting scandal in cricket. The Cricket this summer has been entertaining but it has not drawn the crowds in like a big summer of test match Cricket, added to that a county Cricket schedule that is under fire. Cricket hasn't had the best summer but it should be warming up this winter as England travel to Australia to fight it out in the Ashes, but the papers again have attacked one our own sports, the News of the World suggesting the story was the biggest of the last ten years. However the only thing that we can be sure of is the fact that the News of the World forked out one of the biggest sums of money to create its own story, in its own Orwellian, Kafkaesque, James Bond villain fantasy, leaving the biggest predicament being who to hate the most, the vindictive out for itself "newspaper" or the gullible Cricketers, one of them as young as 18 whom could only dream of the amount of money being thrown around. The real question is, did they really need to do it? Hasn't Pakistan been through enough recently?