I THINK, following the unbelievably inept performance of the England football team against Poland, that even the wearer of the rosiest tinted glasses will concede the time for drastic thinking and action is upon us.

Since Hill and Co got the maximum wage abolished, the game has spiralled ever downwards, and if no strong personality appears on the scene to stop it, it will inevitably disappear into a "black hole" from which nothing in the way of dedication or success will ever again emerge.

Older people will no doubt recall those heady days - maximum wage notwithstanding - when England could have fielded at least three teams on the international stage, and still have enjoyed a full league programme.

Goalkeepers? Take your pick: Swift, Ditchburn, Williams, Merrick, Bartram.

Full backs? Choose a pair from Hardwicke, Scott, Eckersley, Ramsey, Byrne, Newton etc.

As for half backs, we were spoiled for choice: Franklin, Mercer, Cullis, Wright, Coleman, Edwards et al, et al.

And what of forwards? Matthews, Finney, Langton, Mullen for starters, and the choice of centre forward from Lawton, Lofthouse, Milburn, Mortenson. In those days, clubs who had players called up for international duty simply replaced them with the reserve understudy, and the home show went on.

Compare that idyllic situation with today.

Whenever any international fixture looms, albeit against the most obscure opponents, and perhaps no more than a friendly, the whole of the Premiership programme is cancelled. Keegan prays that wonderkid Owen will be fit, and the team staggers to a humiliating defeat or draw.

Humiliating? We've forgotten the meaning of the word.

If this once-beautiful game, controlled by elected bodies, played by dedicated professionals and enjoyed by the common man is to be saved from absolute devastation, someone, somewhere, sometime, will have to rethink values.

The maximum wage ensured that no tiny group of wealthy clubs could monopolise the prizes, and all first and most second division clubs had players that attracted spectators.

The thing that Hill and Co should have destroyed was the odious contract, which did far more harm to the game than did the maximum wage, being the nearest thing to serfdom since the Middle Ages. It is the old law of inverse ratio: the more you pay, the less you get.

F BURNS, Livesey Branch Road, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.