Anger....

An e-mail found on Alex Salmond's laptop: "Come Home Agent McLaren - your job is done."

I must admit I was a bit stunned on Wednesday nigh when I got home, checked the internet and discovered that England had been knocked out of the European Championships. So it was with great joy that I then tuned into 6-0-6 on Radio 5 to listen to the general public venting their collective spleen. Hearing the nation speak with such collective force restores my faith in our ability to speak as one. I just wish it was about something worthwhile.....

I've heard numerous sports fans and football journalists vent across the airwaves over the past 48 hours and their collective anger is of epic proportions. It seems a travesty of nature that England will not be competing with the other great nations next summer. Every voice speaks with passion and righteous indignation. It is the type of mood which would have politicians running in fear. There seems to be a genuine desire to change the football culture of something I heard a rugby player describe as the Andrex Premiership - a bit soft and unnecessarily expensive.

But here's my concern. Sport, and I count myself as a fan,is essentially trivia. It isn't that important - despite the BBC letting its economics editor speculate on the fallout of the failure to advance to the finals - yet the public and our journalist speak with such conviction and belief that the nation deserves better.

We do. But not about sport. If only our journalists could speak with as much anger about politics, or schools, or poverty - forget impartiality, what they should be demanding is that good be done, wherever and whenever it can. If only collectively we could feel the same. Sport draws us together in hope. Maybe it does so because in most other things we are suffering from apathetic despair.