John Grady

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang) for securing this excellent debate. Last year I met representatives of Hampden bowling club and Football’s Square Mile who are working to preserve football heritage in my seat, which includes the birthplace of Alexander Watson Hutton, the founder of Argentinian football. Glasgow East is the start of the story that leads to Messi, Maradona and River Plate and Boca Juniors, which are the Oxford United and Reading of Buenos Aires. Their project points to something profound. Football is our history and culture. It is part of our families’ history, and is a tie that brings us together. All that draws us to football and more, in particular the emotion of hope. We all feel that hope at the beginning of a season that we might win something: the hope in the bleak midwinter that a team can win a derby—not my team Newcastle—or win a cup game. We lose this at our peril. I wonder whether football has lost sight of it. For example, in my lifetime, Rangers, Aberdeen and Celtic have won the European cup winners’ cup and the European cup. Dundee United remains unbeaten against Barcelona. We heard mention of Leeds; we could also mention Forest and so on. Could that happen now? Not at all. The chance of success is concentrated on a small number of clubs. Many fans say that they have less interest in football as a result. This poses a profound challenge to our game. As Sir Bobby Robson said, football is about “the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city.”