Sport plays a significant role in cultural life. The tide of its mass growth in popularity has always been intensely covered in the press but now sportsmen and in particular footballers are under scrutiny like never before. Every look, step, night out and relationship is portrayed through a journalist's view to its mass audience. "You might well be a professional but things happen. You might see a great game of football, which might have one …showed first 75 words of 1736 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1736 total…p23) With this in mind and the fact that the back pages and sport pull out magazines are based on sports results and match reports, serious sport reporting continues to exist. However there are a growing number of sports journalists who want to keep their audience entertained and they are not wrong in doing so as, "It's an old cliché but without fans professional sport would not exist." (Football Babylon II p181)