EVERY weekend throughout the football season, pitches up and down the land will bear witness to all manner of expletives, some shouted others merely mouthed. Yet it appears that the dirtiest word of them all is another 'F' word. Failure.

Modern society increasingly has a problem with these two syllables. Indeed, some schools will have no truck with the very concept, labelling children who have not done particularly well as having experienced delayed success or contrived jargon to that effect.

Now, it appears the fear of not winning has spread across the turf of our national game. A youth football league has banned publication of match results if a team loses by more than 7-0. We seem to be contributing to the problem too, our sub editors writing headlines that include such bon mots as "hammered" or "thrashed".

Last year, this newspaper took a dim view of parents behaving badly on the sidelines. We said that such actions set a bad example to youngsters. Sadly, today we must repeat the advice.

For there is nothing wrong about defeat. Failing to prevail in any given endeavour is not a crime or a sin. It doesn't mean that someone is any less of a person. Failure is a fact of life, something that all of us experiences several times within a lifetime. Failure should teach us where we have gone wrong and ultimately spur us on to success.

We believe that young people who are taught otherwise are ill-served by adults who most certainly appear to have taken their eye off the ball.