Tell your pal we've been poor for the last 7 years.

As could the huge rise in obesity. I left school 8 years ago and can say that PE simply wasn't considered an "important subject". We had PE twice a week, at hour long lessons, with 15 minutes of that taken up by getting changed/getting in early to change (and if the showers worked, wash) to be on time for next lesson. That is a hour and a half of physical activity per week if weather permitted. Any rain and we took indoor PE lessons (one week the girls would have the gym, we'd have the clasroom and then the next). Whilst in year 7/8 we got hour long dinner times - my group of friends were very sporting and we played football, cricket and even rugby (despite our schools' lack of PE lessons we had 4 huge fields, 1 rugby field, 3 pitches and a cricket field) at dinner times. We also played in the school sports teams. However, in year 9 our new headteacher took the radical step of not allowing 1 hr lunch times, instead opting for 30minutes of dinner time restricted to either the canteen for school bought dinners or the hall for packed lunches. This was to "encourage learning" as she considered childrens' behaviour after lunch as too "boisterous". That took our 1 hour a day of activity away from us and certainly didn't make any improvement into the behaviour of any of us in the afternoon. If anything we were more hyper as we hadn't had our 1 hour to run around like headless chickens. Due to this school sports teams training was put back to after school rather than dinner time. Many of the lads couldn't attend as they played football, rugby, cricket, tennis etc elsewhere. Our school sports suffered. What was previously an excellent school for sports (we produced Ryan Allsop the blackpool gk, Chris Woakes for cricket & currently a young all rounder called Aaron Thomason for Warwickshire who is coming through and even a fair few once-professionals like Daryl Westlake at Walsall/Sheff Utd now playing for Stourbridge) now, from testament from my cousins and sister, can barely get an 11 together for their school football team. Apparently my year were the last real "sports team". We won everything. As mentioned we have produced a good few professionals over the time and a lot from my year currently play at quite high amateur levels. In our year there were a few obese children, like any other. However most of us were sporting and, even up until now, a lot of my school friends still play some sort of sport at whatever level. Again from testament from family still in the school and my friends' family it is now rife with obesity. Children can "opt out" of P.E if they feel uncomfortable doing so, which is pretty much everyone apparently. It's a blatant lack of respect and laughs in the face of government initiatives of pushing physical education and sports in working class schools to help those that can't afford specialist training/combat obesity. The headmistress that imposed these God awful rules is now a Dame; famed for "turning schools around". Because a letter on a piece of paper is looked upon far more favourable than any accolade in sports.

I wouldn’t restrict that funding to football either and the game most definitely needs to make a contribution. I do feel though the impact of government policy has had a huge influence on the nation’s sporting prowess, standard of football and general health. When I was at secondary school, 5O years ago, we had 90 minutes of PE, an hours swimming and 3 hours of sport in the curriculum every week. Plus an hours frantic football every lunchtime. 20 years later as parents we had to organise and fund all our children’s sports activity - fortunately for them we could afford to access this. I happen to know the parents of a recent Lancs CCC captain, helping him make the grade required a second mortgage, literally. While I accept the influence of foreign players in football influences opportunities for British players the decline from the days when every team was made up of players from the home nations must be closely linked to government policy on sport.

Travis played in both (and was our best player yesterday imo).

3 of the finest records ever made. The 25th Anniversary editions of Murmur and Reckoning both have an extra live CD of concerts from around that time. Both excellent.