‘Sports people shouldn’t be seen as role models.’

Sportsmen and women don’t deserve the admiration that comes with reaching the top level of their respective game. They are severely overpaid, too; Premier League footballers earn astronomical wages, with an average salary of £2.3m a year, not to mention the millions they earn from sponsorship deals. They are also childish and irresponsible. Ched Evans, Jermaine Pennant and several other high-profile players have been convicted of crimes, with the former having been recently released following a sentence served for rape. The likes of Robin van Persie have also been on trial for alleged criminal offences. It’s disgraceful that they receive the idolisation that they do, isn’t it?

Well, actually, no. With the exception of the few sports people that have come under-fire or been convicted for alleged offences, sportsmen and women are nearly the perfect role models. Having devoted hundreds of thousands of hours to achieving their dreams, overcoming the millions and millions who didn’t make it to the highest level. No one has worked harder to get to where they are than the sportsmen you watch on television every week. Ronaldo, Messi, Farah, Ennis-Hill, Bolt. If these athletes didn’t deserve what they have, would they have all their supporters looking up to them? No.

Stars as revered as Manchester United striker Robin van Persie have faced trials for alleged criminal offences.

Alternative titles:

Gascoigne suffers defeat in latest bout with alcoholism

Hero in need: Let’s save Gazza

Gazza, 46, ended up in hospital this week after a mammoth booze binge.

Gascoigne, 46, was hospitalised this week in the wake of being driven back to alcohol.

1) The prepositions contribute a narrative feel to the anecdote, distancing Orwell from the events and shifting any potential judgemental views onto his friend, the main character, and not him, the narrator.

2) Orwell’s tone in the extract comes across, in my eyes, as informal. His use of a more generalised phrase in the opening sentence (‘a couple’) makes it seem less set-in-stone and less precise, creating a more informal manner of writing. The succession of embedded clauses inject extra, more personal, information and contribute to the general tone.