Modern football is superb - apart from minority of mindless fans: Yorkshire Post Letters

PETER Hyde denigrates modern football by comparing it to the game of the late 1940s and 50s (The Yorkshire Post, April 19). In fact professionalism crept in long ago, when the game was in its infancy.

Let us, just for a moment, revisit those days of which Peter has such favourable memories. Run-down stadiums were bursting with undiscriminating fans deprived of meaningful sports entertainment by the war years. As there were no floodlights for evening matches, and hence little room for postponements, fixtures had to be fulfilled in appalling conditions: I recall matches in pure mud where players struggled to move the ball more than 10 yards. Teams were made up of almost exclusively white, British players.

The downside of modern football is not the players but a minority of mindless fans. Recently we have had a fan running on to the pitch and attacking a player and other players racially abused. The victims reacted with exemplary dignity.

Of course professional football is a business but right now it has a superb product. Try telling anyone who watched the recent classic between Manchester City and Tottenham that football is not a sport.