WE applaud Malvern referee Malcolm Murray for having the courage to call off last Sunday's under-13s match between Malvern Town Wanderers and Hadley Rangers because of the bad behaviour of the visiting parents.

It would be good for the game of football if the same kind of willingness to deal with this issue was also be shown by the Football Association.

It is more difficult to demand acceptable behaviour when as an example people can point to the antics of millionaire players and even managers like Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson.

Should we be surprised if after the childish behaviour which followed the recent Manchester United v Arsenal game, we see the same kind of thing happening at a Sunday afternoon boys' football match in Malvern.

But at the end of the day, there really is no excuse, this is supposed to be a game and what kind of an example are we setting for our children?

Saturday marks the 10th birthday of the National Lottery and in that time there are few parts of our area that have not benefited from Lottery cash.

Few would have anticipated 10 years ago just what a transformation it would have brought to the lives of so many ordinary people.

Sadly, the golden days of lottery largesse may be behind us.

We fear future governments are going to find it increasingly difficult to resist the urge to tap this huge source of additional revenue.

At least we can say we made the most of the opportunity while we had it.