Olympic lessons

As the Olympic revelry reaches a crescendo with the closing ceremony tonight, the Sunday Supplement panel reflected on what lessons English football could learn.

"It will be interesting to see if we as a nation have a mood where we look at the positives about our football. Let's look at the good role models in the game rather than focus on the bad ones."
Andy Dunn Quotes of the week

The public and media have reacted with extraordinary enthusiasm to the London 2012 Olympics with the success of British athletes and the spirit of the competition and crowds, among the leading sources of pride and positivity. In contrast, football has endured a more trouble reputation in recent years with a number of on and off field incidents in the Premier League last season seemingly damaging the game.

The Sunday Telegraph's Duncan White believes football should try to emulate the spirit with which much of the Games were contested. He told Sunday Supplement: "There is an aspect of the sports culture that is really refreshing about the Olympics. We have to be very careful to generalise about football, there are good guys and bad guys, there are ones that are in the headlines for the wrong reasons and there are the ones that are fairly boring and normal people.

Spirit

"But in the sports culture the petty trying to gain an advantage over your rivals, anything from throw-ins to free kicks, people are losing patience with that. When you see the Olympics and the kind of spirit with which that is conducted- the way people behave when they lose, the way they respond to each other at the end of a race - after quite a grubby season off the field with football, I think that is something people would like to see a little more of Corinthian spirit coming back a bit."

Andy Dunn from the Daily Mirror was less willing to hold up the Olympians as the ultimate role models, but did wonder whether the media would react to the public's appetite for positive sports stories.

"I think there is an element of what we focus on during an Olympics and what we focus on with football," he said. "Everything we wanted in the Olympics was a feel-good story. If something happened like when the British cyclist took a deliberate fall to get a restart that was pushed aside. Had that happened with a Premier League footballer, he would have been pilloried and lambasted and held up as the cheating culture in football.

"It is interesting whether it will makes us look at how we cover football because what the sports pages have done is go straight in with everything being a positive. There has not been a negative story even though there are negative stories out there. Athletics and cycling in the past have had major issues with drugs for example. The media has found it is better to focus on the positive.

Positives

"It will be interesting to see if we as a nation have a mood where we look at the positives about our football. Let's look at the good role models in the game rather than focus on the bad ones."

The Mail on Sunday's Rob Draper believes players should be trusted more with the media and public - a lesson that he believes England are beginning to realise. He said: "I think they have already started to learn under Roy Hodgson. If you think about Euro 2012, they seemed to embrace the culture and they impressed the locals with their accessibility. And I think there was a real mood change in the England camp and the FA were delighted with that.

"Roy Hodgson and his assistants all bought into that and realised that something had to change because in the past England squads have looked like they have not enjoyed being at tournaments and they have been held up in out of the way hotels or complexes.

"If there is one thing that the Olympics has shown it is that the sportsmen who are accessible and allowed to project themselves and show their character, people love them and generally they will be respected.

"Of course it is a completely different level of fame and scrutiny. So it is going to be different for them but I think they can build on doing that. We have seen how people do love our sportsmen when they are accessible and when they talk well about stuff. I think the England squad and management are trying to work on that."