Sick-note culture a bitter pill to swallow

12:20pm Friday 21st November 2008

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’m not sure I’ll bother with the Chesterfield game on Tuesday.

Being a night match, Valley Parade is likely to be a bit nippy and I can’t be doing with all the hassle of trying to keep warm and getting a report typed up in time for the final whistle.

But I will be available for the Leyton Orient cup tie next Saturday if that’s okay.

Hang on a minute, what do you mean it’s part of my job?

Footballers seem to be allowed to pick and choose when they want to turn out so I presumed those who spend their time writing about football should be allowed to do the same.

Surely what’s good enough for the likes of Steven Gerrard, Ashley Cole et al should be all right for us mere mortals in the press box.

Oh, I see, they were injured. Of course, how silly of me not to realise.

They all would have played against Germany on Wednesday fitness permitting. Sadly, in six prominent cases, it wasn’t.

It will be interesting, though, to see the Premier League teamsheets this weekend. I wonder how many of those seven-day setbacks have miraculously healed in time for kick-off with the team who pay their wages.

We’ve been here before. Every time, in fact, that an England international comes around.

A call-up homes into view and, as if by magic, the elite of our game are doing the dying swan act. So much for national pride.

I might be doing all these brave boys a huge disservice. If so, I apologise humbly and instead laud their efforts to play twice in four days for the princely sum of £100,000 a week.

It just seems strange that so many of the big names should be ruled out at exactly the same moment.

I feel particularly sorry for Gerrard, who seems jinxed when it comes to wearing the Three Lions.

Remember, he had to dip out of two World Cup qualifiers in September to undergo a minor operation. And now he’s missed out again after failing a fitness test called by a suspicious Fabio.

But luckily he always seems to make it back from the treatment table in time to earn his crust with Liverpool. Fortunate, that.

Ashley Cole must have picked up his England knock sitting on the Chelsea bench at West Brom. Maybe the bottom team should have supplied softer seats for their illustrious visitors.

Both Joe Cole and Emile Heskey were never in the reckoning but, whatever he may say publically, I’m sure Capello was not too impressed to be denied the services of Wayne Rooney and his new skipper Rio Ferdinand.

And what about Frank Lampard, whose troublesome rib held up against Burnley the previous week but couldn’t make it through to Berlin?

It just seems more than a coincidence that injuries to key personnel – key to both club and country – should all come in a rush. A rush three days before England’s game.

A friendly in November is usually a meaningless exercise. But playing Germany is different.

Like playing Brazil or Argentina, there’s no such thing as a kick-about when England share the same pitch with the Germans.

Wednesday was the first time for 36 years that England had played in Germany’s capital. That hardly renders the occasion a meaningless one.

Study the line-ups on Match of the Day and spot the difference. Let’s see what has happened with the walking wounded.

For now, I can feel a tickle in the back of my throat coming on. Hopefully I might just have enough voice left to make a pre-game phone call to my gaffer …