Why Andy Cole and fellow victims of cash scandals were forced to march in protest this week

The footballers were keen to remain peripheral to the events of the day. For once, it was not all about them.

It was primarily about those they had come to walk alongside, other victims of fraud and financial misconduct, and campaigners demanding urgent changes to the law before more slide into a spiral of depression.

Nurses, soldiers, postal workers, IT contractors. Public sector workers and the self-employed. Savers from all professions. All of them exhausted by the turmoil. Out of ideas on where to turn next. Led around in circles by different authorities in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

The footballers picked up the placards calling for a statutory public inquiry into financial scandals, the role of HMRC, issuing huge tax demands and years of interest on money in many cases never earned, and police indifference towards it all.

They took their turns carrying a coffin to symbolise those lives lost to suicide and joined the chants for justice as the protest made its way through London’s streets from the Law Courts to the Treasury, HM Revenues Customs, New Scotland Yard and Westminster.

Mingled and chatted with others, victims of the Equitable Life Scandal, the Woodford Scandal and the Loan Charge Scandal, among others.

This was Wednesday, the day when Manchester City and Arsenal would crash out of the Champions League and these were footballers famous in the first decade of the Premier League, when the influx money catapulted wages into another stratosphere enabling them to make investments they hoped would provide financial security for their families when their short careers ended.

Between them, the victims marching together lost tens of millions. Some lost everything and regardless of how much you started with, that is devastating.

The footballers realise there will be little public sympathy around for them. They were handsomely paid and the perception is probably that they knew the risks and invested badly.

All of them would strongly refute this. They were not aware of what they were getting into.

There are allegations that many in football have been victims of systematic crime. Claims unscrupulous financial advisors targeted players deliberately, selling schemes they knew were unsuitable.

Some of them talk of being ‘groomed’. Those in professional sports are easy targets. Usually focused elsewhere, on a hectic schedule but conscious they should prepare for the future because the career is short.

Some of the players carry an additional sense of responsibility because as senior professionals they recommended these investment schemes run by people they trusted to younger teammates and saw them lose millions, too.

Worryingly, they suspect this sort of thing is still be rife. Many are still involved in football and see plenty of characters descend on training grounds selling all sorts from overseas property to uncut gems.

Chris Smalling is not part of this group but earlier this month came reports the Roma defender was suing a financial advisor for fees incurred.

The footballers on the march you would recognise. Among them, established internationals and title winners. Household names and familiar faces still on TV.

Andy Cole, Danny Murphy, Martin O’Neill, Colin Hendry and Michael Thomas, to name a few of those present, and those present represented only a small portion of those affected. They have been fighting this battle for more than a decade.

They were keen to remain peripheral. Simply part of the crowd but keen to be present as a show of solidarity among the unheard, people aggrieved by their treatment within a system that did nothing to protect them. One that is now doing nothing to help.

On that score, out of the march uniting these victims of financial misconduct emerged an idea to do something useful in the form of plans for a charity, coming soon.

English football has something unique in the FA Cup 

English football has something unique in the FA Cup. The world’s oldest competition, integral to our culture, stitching everything together through history from the very start to the modern day, from the very top to the grassroots.

As it represents our entire game our regular domestic season should culminate with its final. The showpiece between the last two teams standing from more than 700 entrants.

It is not wrong to cherish that. Nor to feel angry when you see it routinely treated as an inconvenience by the wealthiest clubs, mostly controlled from afar by owners, investing in our game for profit or on sports-washing project and now seemingly able to change rules on a whim without proper consultation.

We can all see the direction of travel. Greed propelling Premier League clubs towards their own version of the future, pricing ordinary people out to embrace an existence on TV with a match-going audience comprised of sponsors, corporate guests and well-off occasional visitors.

All choreographed by anthems with words on the big screens and singalong celebration ceremonies, everybody arriving and leaving via the megastore.

If the FA is not going to stop this happening who is?

Wealdstone's bright young boss 

Sam Cox was appointed Wealdstone manager a fortnight ago, charged with keeping the part-timers afloat among professional rivals in the National League, and he completed his mission with a 3-2 win at Oldham on Saturday. 

Cox is 33 and coaches the Under-15s at Tottenham’s academy. He joined Wealdstone’s staff in January when Notts County lured away Stuart Maynard and two of his coaches from Grosvenor Vale. 

Cox was promoted to interim boss when David Noble was sacked after a defeat Boreham Wood on April 6 and won three of the last five to keep them up. A promising start to a career perhaps.

Sadlers aplenty at the Saddlers 

Walsall are known as the Saddlers because the Midlands town was the heart of a thriving leather goods industry in Victorian Britain, a time when football was getting organised and the horse was still the key to working life. 

At its peak, there were 75 firms in the region making bridles, saddles and harnesses, and you can only applaud the club’s commitment to its heritage. 

Not content with Mat Sadler quietly earning a fine reputation as head coach, they have now raided Morecambe for chief executive Ben Sadler, who will change League Two horses at the end of the season.