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Professional Referees and the Third Way

The Clerk of Oxenford

Wednesday, April 4th, 2001

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Capital and its political servants talk about a Third Way,
A neutral third force which softens the conflicts
Between Capital and what was once called the working class;
Spin-doctors like us to believe that Socialism has had its day,
And that market forces mark the End of History,
While economists are paid a fortune to lie and cheat
And pretend that recession and depression,
Poverty, unemployment and starvation
Are remedial, rather than endemic consequences
Of overproduction and underconsumption.
And what’s a referee, if it isn’t some sort of Third Way,
In a sport which has been embourgeoisified,
And turned from the Peoples’ Game into a corporate commodity?
And isn’t a referee supposed to be a symbolic third way,
Harmonising conflict with neutral impartial judgement?
But in the drive for profit, the football business gives the game away –
For when referees are professionalised and commodified,
Wearing their sponsor’s logo,
They can’t help but cheat us,
It’s their function and purpose.
What third way?

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/professional-referees-and-the-third-way/