Football - Is it simply a game? And does injury compensation have a part to play?

The World Cup is upon us, and love it or hate it, there's not much you can do to escape. The football news has crept from the back pages of the papers to the front, every other car seems to be sporting a St George's Cross, and the telly schedules have been rehashed to squeeze in as much of the action as possible.

Personally, I love it. I can't think of anything more perfect than a whole month of constant, non-stop football, spoon-fed to me like some sort of highly addictive, sugary sweet narcotic.

My other half, on the other hand, hates it.

She just doesn't seem to understand, no matter how much I try to explain, that football is, quite simply, amazing. I've told her that the Lord created it on the eighth day and that that it is something we should all be eternally grateful for, but she just doesn't get it.

She can't comprehend how, unless there happens to be a World Cup or European Championship, summer is the most pointless thing ever created, and that wet, cold November Saturday afternoons are so much better than boring sunny June days when there's nothing to do but sit around and wait for the coming season's fixture list to be unveiled.

I've tried to help her see the error of her ways, but she still doesn't get it. She thinks it's sad that I can sit there for hours every day staring at the TV and watching twenty-two grown men kick a lump of leather around a piece of grass. She tuts and snorts in disgust if, because of an appalling refereeing decision, I'm forced to jump to my feet and scream obscenities at a man who, thousands of miles away, has no chance of hearing my well-balanced and considered point of view. Pretty rich, I reckon, from a girl who's always complaining that I'm not emotional enough.

"Sit down," she'll order in her best sergeant-major's tone that's more suited to disobedient children or crazed mental patients, "It's only a game."

Only a game? Surely she hasn't just said what I think she's said? How can it possibly be only a game? Does she really think I'd get this upset if it was only a game? Would a game make a grown man leap around in joyful ecstasy and jump on top of a pile of other grown men when his team scores a goal, only to leave him crying and destroyed minutes later when the opposition does exactly the same thing?

Of course it's not only a game, everyone knows that. And there's nothing more pertinent to explain why right now than Wayne Rooney's foot and the injury compensation scandal surrounding it.

Virtually the whole country knows the saga of the Scouse wonderkid's World Cup build-up, but for the benefit of all you non-football folk that are still reading, it's worth a quick recap.

All last season the pundits were singing the praises of the 20-year-old Manchester United forward, predicting great achievements for a Rooney-inspired England at this summer's World Cup in Germany. The goals were flying in and the fiery temper that had marred past performances seemed to finally be under control.

And then it all came crashing down. On April 29th, just six weeks before Sven's men were due to begin their quest for World Cup glory, an innocuous-looking tackle by a Chelsea defender saw Rooney carried off the pitch on a stretcher.

England fans all the way from Carlisle to Land's End held their breath, praying that it would be nothing more than a bit of bruising that an ice-pack and a week's rest would sort out. But the prayers proved to be in vain and the next day it was revealed that the youngster was in a bit of trouble.

He had, according to hospital boffins, broken the base of the fourth metatarsal on his right foot, which, to those of us not versed in medical matters, basically meant that he was knackered for at least six weeks. Whilst we're on the subject, note that football teaches us valuable lessons, in this case about the complexities of the human skeletal system. Without football I wouldn't have a clue what a metatarsal is. So see, my darling, football isn't just a game, it is, in fact, an important source of learning and knowledge.

Anyway, back to Wayne's injury. That was that it seemed. With only six weeks until England's tournament opener against Paraguay, it looked like there was no chance of Mr Rooney being fit. And with no Wayne, what chance did our boys have of lifting the trophy in July? To put it bluntly, none.

So there was some astonishment, as well as a little bewilderment, when Sven-Göran Eriksson named an injured Rooney in his provisional World Cup squad. Many fans questioned the inclusion of a player who was unlikely to be fit and would thus be a wasted, unused part of the 22-man squad.

Manchester United, Wayne's employers, were also reported to be somewhat stunned at the decision to take their star player to Germany. Bought for nearly £27 million less than two years before, the Liverpool-born forward forms the basis of his club's ambitions for the next few seasons. Therefore, any long-term injury would prove to be a massive blow to United's Premiership and Champions' League hopes, and that was something that manager Alex Ferguson was unwilling to risk.

There were reports in the papers of the possibility of Manchester United making a compensation claim if Rooney's foot did suffer further damage during the World Cup, but it seemed unlikely that he would be anywhere near fit enough to participate anyway, and so the rumours were just branded as sensationalist media speculation.

Some personal injury solicitors, however, did see the potential for a compensation claim, and speaking shortly after Rooney's inclusion in the World Cup squad was announced, Michael Townley, a top sports lawyer, said, "In my view, the sheer scale of the potential economic consequences of playing an injured Rooney will mean the FA errs on the side of caution."

The FA, it seems, were obviously willing to take that risk, much to the dismay of Alex Ferguson, and Rooney made his World Cup debut with a substitute appearance against Trinidad and Tobago in England's second match of the tournament. A place in the starting line-up against Sweden followed and, although taken off halfway through the second half, the 20-year-old seemed to come through both games without any further injury to his troublesome foot.

Talk of Manchester United making expensive compensation claims seemed to no longer be such an issue, and unless Rooney comes a cropper later in the tournament (at the time of writing we're only days away from a last sixteen clash with Ecuador, a potential banana skin but a game that we can, and should, win) we'll have forgotten all about the threat of litigation, damages and courtrooms.

Or will we? Football, it seems, is changing. The fact that I'm sat here even discussing football and personal injury compensation in the same article would seem bizarre to a fan of twenty or thirty years ago. If football is only a game, as my other half seems to think, surely what happens on the pitch should remain on the pitch and when the final whistle blows we should just shake hands and forget all about it.

If the tales of my dear old grandpa are anything to go by, that was the way it used to be. When men were men and football was always at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon; none of these crazy 11am kick-offs purely for the benefit of the Sky TV cameras. Footballers didn't command multi-million-pound salaries or drive ridiculously priced sports cars back then, and talk of people suing each other because of what happened on the pitch would have been met with dumbfounded bewilderment.

So where has it all gone wrong, if it has actually gone wrong at all? One word, pure and simple: money.

There are enormous sums of money involved in the sport nowadays, more than ever before, and so many people make their living from it. Not just the players, but journalists, clothing manufacturers, TV executives and bookmakers too. Football is big business, possibly one of the biggest businesses on the planet, and so must be run like a business. And business interests have to be protected.

The biggest assets that football clubs have is their players, and even though they're living, breathing human beings, they are, essentially, just that, an asset to whichever club happens to be employing them at the time. In reality, they're no different from a farmer's especially fertile prize-winning bull or a musician's top-of-the-range violin. They bring in the pennies and put dinner on the table.

It's not surprising, therefore, that football club bosses want to protect their players from injury, and if they can't be protected, then they want to be compensated so that they can go out and buy someone else.

As Freddie Shepherd, Newcastle United's controversial chairman, said only this week, "If you lend tools to someone and they come back broken, you shouldn't have to pay for the repair."

He wasn't talking about a busted hammer or a bent pitchfork, of course, but about Michael Owen, his £17 million striker who flew home from World Cup duty with England with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament that is going to keep him out of action for at least six months. Can you really blame Mr Shepherd for being unhappy, or for demanding injury compensation from the Football Association? Of course you can't. His prize asset, the player on whose shoulders the expectations for the coming season lay, is now going to be, in football terms at least, completely useless.

If that was your prize bull that had been in a nasty accident when borrowed by a fellow farmer, and could no longer do its job of impregnating cows, you'd want to be compensated. Well football chairmen are the same, and who can blame them?

The past few years have also seen an increase in the number of personal injury compensation cases brought by the players themselves. The sport has always contained an element of risk and the players know that when they take to the pitch. Most of the grown men we watch running around on a Saturday afternoon sacrificed a good deal of their education to get them where they are today and would have left school at 16 to concentrate solely on their football.

Without football they would most likely be working on building sites or in garages, and contrary to popular belief, the majority of today's professional footballers don't earn tens of thousands of pounds every week. When their careers are over, normally by the age of 35, most have to go out and get jobs just like you and I. And with twenty years of never having worked a normal job, many struggle enormously.

The players know this when they tie up their boots and jog out onto the pitch and most play in the spirit of the game, getting stuck in and giving their all, but not going out to intentionally hurt their opponents. Some, however, do get a little carried away and, unable to control themselves, do things that if you or I did in the street on a Friday night, would see us arrested for assault.

Players all through the years have seen their careers ended by maliciously late tackles made with the sole intention of causing injury. In the 1980s, players who had seen their livelihoods wrecked by such tackles started taking their assailants to court, demanding personal injury compensation to make up for their lost wages.

The years since have seen numerous court cases involving footballers suing each other for career-ending tackles, most notable among them a 1993 claim by Rangers' Iain Durrant against Aberdeen's Neil Simpson for more than two million pounds, following possibly one of the most horrific challenges ever seen on a football pitch. To this day, the tackle and the furor it created is still a sore issue between the fans of the two clubs and has, on more than one occasion, been blamed for violence between them.

But who can blame one player from making a compensation claim against another? Just because they're kicking a ball around on a rectangle of grass, some people seem to think they are immune from the laws of the land. Visit any park in the country on a Sunday morning to watch a pub football match and you're guaranteed to see behaviour that would probably result in a court summons if it occurred anywhere else but on a football pitch.

With no win, no fee personal injury cases becoming more and more a part of our society, so amateur footballers are beginning to use them to pursue compensation following a bad tackle on the pitch that has caused an injury resulting in time off work and lost earnings. And who can blame them either?

Society is changing, attitudes are changing and, as a result, football is changing. Some will argue that it is improving while others are convinced that it is going to the dogs. Maybe it is sad that there is so much money in football nowadays, but it's a sign of the times and something that we've got to be prepared to live with.

One thing it does prove is that football is definitely not just a game. It's a business, a passion, a love and a way of life to countless people the world over. So, my darling, when you next moan at me for getting 'over-excited' and shouting at the telly, just remember that; remember what it means to me and what it means to millions like me. And please please please don't say, "It's only a game." Because it quite obviously isn't.

The great Liverpool manager, Bill Shankly, was once quoted as saying, "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that."

I don't know how much truth there is in that, but I do know that there's not much in the world that can compare to the way I feel about football. And if it is only a game then I guess I'm in serious trouble.