Players, captains, coaches and managers come in for plenty of criticism for our serial underachievement in a range of sports. It’s time more attention was given to owners, administrators and especially selectors in a fortnight when the England cricket team has underperformed again.

Take Newcastle. Freddy Shepherd chose managers and signed players. Millions were wasted in serial underachievement. Mike Ashley seems to have followed a similar route. In Europe, the directors of clubs like Real Madrid routinely buy the players and foist them on coaches.

Then there are the people who run the FA. Adam Crozier had possibly the most freedom ever as Chief Executive when he signed Sven-Goran Eriksson, arguably the third best manager. When he went, the FA and Brian Barwick chose the dreadful Steve McLaren.

The England cricket selectors have this week shown astonishing ineptitude. They chose an Australian who had played 11 matches ahead of the former number one bowler in the world (Steve Harmison). He played one match and then wanted to go home to Oz. England lost the match, being unable to bowl out South Africa.

Then they called up Harmison but played Paul Collingwood instead, who had scored only 92 runs all season, retaining the equally under-performing Tim Ambrose. Both predictably failed again. Batsman like Ravi Bopara, Owais Shah, Vikram Solanki and Mark Ramprakash must wonder what they have to do.

And in other sports, the establishment makes serial errors. The RFU selected Brian Ashton, whose players got to the World Cup semi-final despite him. Although he was rumbled, like the equally unsuitable Andy Robinson, England had gone backwards. Then they watched while arguably the best young rugby coach in the world, Englishman Sean Edwards, took up a permanent position with Wales!

There are sadly too many examples but this week’s story from a former British star spoke of the happier and more motivated atmosphere among the Olympic swimmers now Bill Swetenham has moved on.

Maybe it’s time the supporters selected the coaches and the teams, so that we only have ourselves to blame. We surely couldn’t do much worse?

What do you think? Have your say.

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