Lifting the ban on pints at football is fair but there are bigger fan issues for Andy Burnham to address

Andy Burnham is looking for early easy wins. In leadership it's a fair strategy - do stuff that doesn't take much effort and give yourself a bit of breathing space.

Equality appears to be front and centre of his fledgling calls and, as a genuine football fan, it's no surprise to see him dip into the nation's game.

On the face of it, proposing a lifting of the ban on drinking alcohol anywhere that faces the football pitch, at men's games, around the UK is valid. How can a venue host a rugby match one week and supporters be allowed to take a beer to their seats, then a few days later many of the same people attending are committing an actual crime if they do so again? 

Anyone of the right age can go to a Test match and spend an entire day in the sunshine sinking expensive crap beer, but put a football fan in a stadium for a few hours and apparently they can't be trusted. All because Margaret Thatcher was, in some respects rightly, fixated on hooliganism 40 years ago.

Has anyone been to a large football ground lately? The higher up you go the more sterile it becomes. You're more likely to be bothered by a kid holding up a cardboard sign asking for a player's shirt than by someone trying to fight you because they've bought an extra pint of Carling.

Do I personally want to have a pint and take it to my seat in the stands? Probably not, though I'm sadly of an age now where nature would likely call too often, so best leave it if I actually want to watch the match.

Would I get a bit annoyed that other people were coming and going to the bar and subsequently to the toilet? Probably a bit but it would be the very least of my concerns.

Are people going to start throwing beer around like the horror-show that is Boxpark during England games? A couple might but they'll soon be told to knock it on the head and that will be the end of that. It doesn't happen at rugby, or cricket or any other sporting event so to think you are going to be showered in ale just because football fans have been given licence to have a drink is ludicrous.  

So is it for me? Not really, but we should be given the choice like at any other sport.

Football fans are always looked at differently, normally with suspicion, and have sadly become used to it. If our new Prime Minister really wants to see them treated fairly then perhaps he should look at how they are mis-treated by police, security firms and the authorities at matches. That one might not be quite the quick and easy win for Burnham but it's something that really needs fixing. 

By all means lift the ban on pints, but while you are at it compare how a group of football fans are handled compared to those at any of the many so-called peaceful ‘protests’ happening around the country. Compare how poor behaviour by followers of other sports is viewed.

There is where the real inequality lies.

• RELATED: Prime Minister says booze ban at football matches could be scrapped
• RELATED: Sheffield-born striker earns England squad recall from Thomas Tuchel
• RELATED: Sheffield United - currently a club of many contradictions
• RELATED: Blue plaque in Sheffield honours world's earliest evidence of football tactics