WHAT A LOTTO RUBBISH
Have you checked your ticket yet?  Another daydream passed you by?  I had two numbers again last week, but what I really needed was six: oh well, there's always next week.

A friend of mine helps to run a junior set-up in the Tommy Treddlehoyle area.  Several teams, split by age, achieving various degrees of success.  In the past they have been charged one set amount for use of the pitch but this year that set amount has been charged for each team: their costs have gone up fivefold in ground rent alone.  Changing facilities are not exactly Premiership standard, in fact they struggle to reach any standard, yet the club now face what is a huge hike in the cost of running a local soccer club.  The parents and helpers deserve all the help that they can get because as almost anyone who has played football at any level will know, such sport promotes self-discipline, which in turn helps to keep a youngster on the straight and narrow.  Hopefully it keeps them off the street corners and away from drug pushers, glue sniffers and what ever else there is to turn good to bad these days.

Now, going back to my opening paragraph, wasn't it the original intention of the then National Lottery to provide funding for all sorts of good causes?  Didn't these good causes include sports facilities, right down to the juniors?  Was it ever intended that some percentage of my pound was meant to go towards paying legal fees for asylum seekers to mount challenges in high court to stay in this country despite them being proven to be bogus?   I don't think so, yet some do-gooders appear to have managed to rake off £340,000 to give to the legal profession in an effort to help these so-called bogus asylum seekers stay in this country and live off yours and my taxes.  How many dressing rooms would £340,000 buy?  Has the country gone mad, or am I turning into Victor Meldrew? 

As I write, Barnsley have just lost again and are in the bottom half of the table with eight points from six games.  I've spent the afternoon watching rugby union on the telly, where unfancied Leeds have beaten the team most people accept is the best side in the country, Leicester.  Comparing player against player Leeds shouldn't even have been on the same pitch, yet they battled and were prepared to spill blood to beat the opposition.  Is that where the Reds are going wrong?  Do the players feel that all they really have to do is turn up?  They should know by now that every team in this division will battle for ninety minutes and the only way Barnsley will beat them is by battling harder and then let the superior skills show.  They need bottle to get out of the second division, but have they got it?  Let's see how things stand at Christmas.  Oh yes, and let's hope that John Dennis has a bit more luck with his Lotto ticket this week!