​Watering PitchIt’s a great game, football.From my view it’s THE great game, though cricket, proper Test cricket, runs a close second in a league table of sporting passions.How can anyone remain unmoved by the heart-pounding excitement, the last-minute goals, the balletic skills, the blood and thunder, the thud and blunder of the beautiful game? The beauty is in the simplicity: outscoring the opposition makes you the better team, on that day at least.Increasingly, however, elite-level football is finding ways to make a pig’s ear of a silk purse.The latest international break, which I reckon means we have endured five fallow weeks already this season after only 10 rounds of Premier League fixtures, has allowed time to reflect on what really gets my goat.Most of the ire is directed at recent developments, a trend that suggests change is not synonymous with progress. So here they are, the first five of 10 things I hate about football. Those who know me, even tangentially, will be unsurprised I’m chuntering like a grumpy old man even before kick-off.Number One: As soon as the players head back to the dressing rooms after an energetic warm-up, a veritable deluge soaks the grass.Why? Or, to put it another way, WTF?The protagonists have presumably chosen a stud-length most suited to the surface they have just tested. What a brilliant idea, altering it with the match only minutes away. To raise the probability of players losing their balance (witness Barca v NUFC last season), the deluge is repeated at half-time. Premier League pitches are today usually a blend of turf and plastic, which has all but eliminated the spectacular divots that were once commonplace. Check a video of the 1970 FA Cup final for evidence. Or any match in any season at the old Baseball Ground from November onwards.So, divots are essentially consigned to history. Hurrah! That doesn’t explain the obsession with soaking the surface. My best guess is that a wet pitch allows the goalscorer to indulge in an elongated double-knee slide without risk of doing an ACL. Such celebrations are tosh. Stop this waste of water right now. Bring back the gentlemanly brief handshake or, if you must, go wild and slap the hero heartily on the back.Number Two: To quote James Taylor, “I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain . . . ”Having with luck banished the artificial rain, let’s ditch the absurd flames that are propelled skywards, seemingly before every Premier League kick-off. When the players emerge from the tunnel and line-up for the officially approved preliminaries, half-a-dozen hefty boxes packed with flammable gas are dragged onto the pitch. Are the pyrotechnics designed to “add to the atmosphere” in other than the physical sense? If so, they are a damp squib. The Premier League’s green credentials are literally incinerated by these pointless rituals.A waste of time and space is bad enough. It becomes far worse if you are a veteran of armed conflict, witnessing this dire spec