Mark Selby fine is ridiculous - sport's too woke and chiefs must see sense

It would be a crying shame if Mark Selby is punished by the World Snooker Tour (WST) over his slip of the tongue after the British Open final. The four-time world champion was interviewed just minutes after losing to Jak Jones in a significant upset, with his use of the F-word causing a stir online. Speaking on Channel 5, the Jester from Leicester said: 'I'm just happy I've got a day off tomorrow because I feel absolutely f****d. I've got nothing left.' That's literally it. Hardly the most controversial thing anyone has ever said, is it? It was funny, if anything, and got plenty of people laughing on social media. More eyes on snooker can only be a good thing. But in the world we live in today, nothing can go unpunished, even accidental slip-ups that don't cause any offence at all. If you believe that anybody who listened to that interview was genuinely upset with Selby's language, I've got a bridge to sell you. But with athletes constantly being held to impossible standards, both internally and in the media, a fine will almost certainly be in the post. It should be noted that Selby was interviewed mere moments after losing a high-profile final, a very long one at that, with no time to recover from the pressure and drain of it all. How can these sports stars be expected to maintain constant perfection under these circumstances? Selby had just missed out on £100,000 in prize money. At least give the bloke a minute to cool off and collect his thoughts. It's not just snooker that's the problem. The introduction of half-time interviews in football (which absolutely nobody asked for, by the way) only serves to highlight the direction in which sport in general is heading. EXPRESS SPORT ON FB! Get all the best sports news and much more on our Facebook page The whole industry is becoming overly sanitised. Woke, you may call it. Every passing comment made by athletes is hyper-analysed by fans and dissected to death in the media, with no regard for the fact that elite sports stars are just regular humans like you and me. Yet people still complain about the decline of big personalities in sport while this continued sterilisation is happening right in front of our eyes. People swear all the time. It's nothing new. You can't just hold these athletes to holier-than-thou standards and expect them never to slip up with no room for mistakes. In this instance, the interview was aired close to midnight and there was clearly no intention of offending anybody. So what reason is there to dish out a fine? It's all a bit ridiculous. If athletes were simply allowed to be human, rather than media-trained robots, sport would be in a much better and even more entertaining place.