REMEMBER WHEN SPORTSMEN BROKE PROPER BONES?

I'm not a great sport fan, i used to watch Liverpool many years ago and had a season ticket for a few years once upon a lifetime ago. I do enjoy watching old games and old boxing on the 'box' from time to time. There's a channel called ESPN on the SKY network and they show old sporting events. I've just been watching a heap of old Liverpool games from the 70's and early 80's. And a series of documentaries on various old time boxers. Things just seemed more real and exciting, as well as 'harder.' There was a documentary about 'Football..The wonderful game'..All about the 70's . It was great all these teams with shocking haircuts;Droopy mustaches; Shorts that were so tight they seperated the blood in the legs from the blood in the rest of the body. Thats probably why the players were always boozing n' shagging all those models, etc...As soon as they took those shorts off and the blood from above and below re-connected in the 'middle-nether reigons'..Well, i'd rather not think about it, it makes you wonder about the team bath. The pitches started the season green and pristine. A few showers of rain and a few games and the bowling green became a bog. This was also the days when tackling was allowed. Players, who wouldn't be allowed in the ground, these days, even if they were allowed out of the solitary padded cell in the psychiatric hospital they were sentanced to spend their life in. In those days they were encouraged, cheered and praised for attempted murder every Saturday afternoon. God bless Tommy Smith! The players used to suffer from proper medical conditions....None of your damaged meta-tarsels, ligament or tendon damage...... It was stuff like "He's done his leg in.... Busted his foot .....Done his knee....Or had his nose busted!!!" All this was cured by the cold wet sponge that had spent the game festering in stagnant water in an old club rusty bucket before being slapped, not placed, but slapped onto the 'sore bit'. 9 times out of 10, the player saw the bucket and sponge coming , muttered 'Sod that!', suddenly found the inner strength to ignore the pain and get back into the battle, it wasn't a game. As the immortal BILL SHANKLEY once said about football being a matter of life or death.."No, son , it's far more important than that".