Saturday, April 29, 2006 - Tough as old boots

They have all sorts of fancy names 'The Predator', the 'Vapor',' Mercurial SG', 'The Pulsado 2' 'Air Zoom II' 'Puma Kings' and various other fancy marketing names. They come in a veritable rainbow of colors such as red, blue, white, green, yellow silver and even gold, not just theplain old boring black with maybe a white stripe or 2 that I wore as a kid.

All sorts of animals are slaughtered to meet fancy materials and designs inluding kangaroos;

http://www.awpc.org.au/kangaroos/giveadidastheboot.htm

They have a variety of sole designs including screw ins, molded and tracks to help the people that wear them keep their feet on the ground, which does not appear to help when I watch the wearers slip and fall week in and week out. And they can cost  $100's of dollars.

 I am of course talking about football boots, I use the term loosely as they now more resemble ballet slippers, and appear to offer about the same amount of foot protection.

David Beckham,  Gary Neville, Danny Murphy, Stephen Gerrard, Scott Parker, Ashley Cole, Michael Owen, Ledley King and now Wayne Rooney for the second time have now fallen victim to the dreaded Metatarsal injury. This is  now an all too familiar injury in which the players have broken one of the longest bones in their feet, whilst wearing 'boots' that they get payed a fortune to wear from sponsors such as Adidas, Nike, Puma.

Englands chances in the world cup seem greatly damaged since Rooney will be out at least 6 weeks and Owen is still recovering.

How about this for a novel idea for all the big manufacturers of 'football boots'.............................. design and manufacture footwear that actually offers at least a modicum of  protection to the players feet and metatarsal bones?!?!?!?!?!