Andrew Fifield On the Premiership: Good ideas are memorable, but bad ones are unforgettable. Hitler had his eastern front, Blair had his Iraq and now Baron Brian Mawhinney has staked his own claim for a place in history.
In case you missed it, the Football League chairman has proposed the abolition of draws in favour of penalty shoot-outs. On the face of it, it is the barmiest brainwave of the lot.
Mawhinney, for all that he is a Conservative peer, seems to possess most of his marbles. The Ulsterman was always on a hiding to nothing, for England's football administrators, and in particular the Football Association, are traditionally regarded with as much affection as sour-faced customs officials or feckless government ministers.
True, there was once a perverse brand of entertainment to be found in their blundering idiocy. Revelations that Sven-Goran Eriksson is still being paid £13,000-a-day and the wearying Wembley Stadium saga have evaporated most of the goodwill and now the inexplicable appointment of Steve McClaren - so out of his depth in international football - can be added to the charge sheet.
Dodgy decision making is inevitable with such bloated and unwieldy organisations, and not even the impending vote on Lord Burns' proposed structural reforms can save their reputation. It is difficult enough to effect change in football. The sport's marketing men may have raced headlong into the 21st century, but there is still a rarefied atmosphere surrounding the laws which govern it. Now, even the most minor tweak is viewed as outright heresy.
There is an extraordinarily conceited belief among what is generally called "football people" that the game is beyond reproach and any effort to rectify its glaring deficiencies is not just an assault on a much-loved institution but a full-scale declaration of war on our way of life. This is palpably absurd. Football's recent past is littered with examples of change being a force for good: three points for a win encouraged teams to be more offensive and daring in their approach, while the abolition of the pass-back rule put an end to those dreary passages of play where centre-halves and goalkeepers - usually from Liverpool - would cynically run down the clock.
Other sports, too, have benefited from a non-reverential approach. Rugby and cricket, for all their buttoned-up reputations, have been employing video umpires to settle controversial decisions for so long it is impossible to imagine life without them. Yet football doggedly refuses to even countenance similar technology, allowing potentially decisive mistakes to snowball.
The game is crying out for decisive leadership on such issues - for either the FA or, even better, Fifa to show some gumption and risk upsetting a few stuffy traditionalists. In fact, they could do worse than follow Mawhinney's lead: it may have been a hare-brained idea, but it was still an idea.
