JAVID DAMES

As anyone who has caught him on TV or radio will be aware, Portsmouth goalkeeper David James is one of the more cerebral of professional sportspeople. No brains in the boots here as his latest well-crafted article in The Guardian at
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/12/30/i_love_my_stats_but_you_need_h.html well illustrates.
Pity the paper's sports production staff aren't in the same league. Or maybe they just don't own a dictionary.
Here's their last par write-off to the James piece: "David James is donating his fee for this article to The National Austistic Society."

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

"Joey Barton is one of those characters that cannot be saved from himself. I know because I was asked to help save him."
The words are those of Harry Harris, the Daily Express's back page agony aunt and the latest to offer us an insight into the troubles life and times of the sinning Scouser.
I have to confess I have spent the best part of the last 48 hours trying to work out exactly what Harris is getting at. If he was asked to "save" Barton and turned the opportunity down, then the fact that Barton "cannot be saved from himself" is hardly the fault of the player.
Harris condemns Barton and his lifestyle and in the same breath reveals that he could have helped him - and refused. The impertinence is breathtaking.

Over in The Mirror, meanwhile, Stan Collymore was offering Barton a shoulder to cry on in a "Dear Joey, All the best Stan", letter. All comment superfluous, as they say.

Barton plainly needs help, in the same way that George Best, Jimmy Greaves, Tony Adams, Gazza, Paul Merson - and a few dozen journalists of my acquaintance - needed help.
What he doesn't need is a small army of two-faced hypocrites, masquerading as amateur psychologists, plumbing his psyche all over the tabloids.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

It's not every day a 35-year-old in the prime of his life dies at his work.
It's even rarer when that man is a footballer who was capped by his country, played over 100 games for one half of Scotland's Old Firm, performed in the English Premiership and was the current captain of his club.
Phil O'Donnell's death was significant in so many ways and yet, when I first wrote this, at about 7pm on Saturday night, it had been almost totally ignored by media outlets. The Guardian managed a brief mention, the Telegraph placed it some distance beneath their fans' forum and transfer talk in order of importance. The Times ignored it completely. The Independent, as we all know, will update only when World War Three breaks out.
BBC and the independent TV channels stand condemned in the same way. They caught up on Sunday, but the damage was done.
Is it an indictment of their fragmented and parochial news sense or simply the fact that O'Donnell was a Scot (playing for no-account Motherwell what's more) and considered small potatoes alongside the shock/horror of Manchester United losing at West Ham, Wasps beating Bath or Australia wrapping up a Test win against India?
Judging by Motherwell manager Mark McGhee's dignified and emotionally charged performance outside Fir Park on Sunday at least poor O'Donnell will be guaranteed a more deserving send-off in his own country.

SPORTING PSEUD OF THE WEEK

Here's a lofty new goal for young, sporting hopefuls.

Who needs Olympic gold, a World Cup podium, MVPs, MoMs, Lance Todds, the PFA awards, even BBC's Sports Personality of the year when there's James Lawton of The Independent bending to bestow gifts from on high:

"As always, the Lawton Awards duly acknowledge outstanding contributions to the sports life of the nation and so naturally eschew the gimmicky conclusion that really it was the year of the horse – Kauto Star – and any number of equine arses dressed up as professional footballers and cricketers."

Question: what do Martin Samuel and Jim Lawton have in common?

Answer: they have both been named Sportswriter of the Year - and Sporting Pseud of the Week.

Doubly blessed, you might say.

COCK-UP AT COCKCROW

"Big Sam in Barton bust-up" cries the back page of the Daily Mirror today in revealing that Joey Barton and his Newcastle manager had a "massive bust-up" hours before the fight that landed the player in jail.
The implication, made by Chief Sports Writer Oliver Holt, is that the row was the catalyst for Barton's Boxing Day thrash round Liverpool and subsequent arrest.
No sources quoted, not even the ubiquitous one "close to the club", which suggests it may be true.
We can blame the newspaper's production staff, then, for cocking-up Olly's mega scoop with the sub-head that suggested the pair had a huge row before LATE-NIGHT Arrest.
Six am is early morning where I live.

MINISTRY OF SILLY STORIES

Here's some fantasy from fantasy reporter Tom Hutchison in today's Daily Star.
Fabio Capello, instead of turning to Linguaphone, is apparently learning English from tapes of old Fawlty Towers episodes.
That's about as plausible as the picture chosen to illustrate the story - Fabio in his Speedos holidaying on a beach in Sicily. In December.
At least it proves he is a hard man. But not half as hard as his missus who is topless (told you it wouldn't take long) alongside him.
Let's hope Capello never reads his own press, particularly what will become the British version of his own press. He's safer with the reruns of John Cleese and Co.
Papers here yet, Fabio?

MYSTERY OF MISTER MADEJSKI

Hats off, and three cheers, for the unnamed club official who, according to the back page of today's Sun, forcibly removed Sunderland manager Roy Keane from Steve Coppell's office after Reading's 2-1 win.
Sounds like a man you would want alongside you in the trenches. Someone prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty. Possibly ex-SAS, or a part-time cage fighter. Or maybe he just has a death wish.
Strange, though, that the Sun never produced a picture of the Madejski hero.
Or a few words from him about how this insignificant jobsworth frogmarched the scariest man in sport down the club's corridors and out into the car park.
Odd, too, that the Sunderland Echo never chased what would appear to be a better than average local story for them. Certainly better than their usual back page fare of "Points Vital, Says Keano"
Or maybe they also worked out that the have-a-go official a figment of a sports desk's imagination. As was Keane's alleged tantrum.
As for the "unnamed Reading player", quoted as the witness, what was he doing taking drinks in the manager's office after a match?.

WOOLLY, WON'T HE?

Brian Woolnough is a confused soul. Today's offering in the Daily Star (Wooly's World) manages a cumulative nine question marks on one page, mainly about the state of mind of Dimitar Berbatov of Spurs. Berbatov and his employers simply do not know where life is taking him - and neither does Woolly.
"So what does Tottenham do with Berbatov?" he asks (note to Star subs, please tell your star scribe teams are plural in the sports section). "Should Ramos build a side around the temperamental Bulgarian forward? Should they sell him to Manchester United? So what will Spurs do about Berbatov?"
Excuse me, Woolly, but so-called "Voices of Sport" are supposed to inform, not ask.
So here's a question of my own: Is your humour-free, badly written, unresearched, repetitive, totally predictable weekly column really worth 60 grand a year, plus expenses?

SPORTING PSEUD OF THE WEEK

The Guardian is the latest media outlet to indulge Russell Brand. What is worse, they are indulging him in their sports section. If Frank Keating were dead, he'd be turning in his grave.

Here's West Ham fan Russell on Saturday, comparing himself with another celebrated self-promoter:

"I was titillated by Tony Montana's ascent through the Cocaine cartels of Florida and South America in the movie Scarface: first he's hanging out with street dealers, then local Mister Big-type characters, before climbing to the top of the power pyramid where corrupt politicians teeter. My own experiences at Upton Park parallel that exactly."

As I recall, someone took a chainsaw to Montana in Scarface, the movie. One can but hope.

BRAINS IN THEIR BOOTS

Playing professional sport doesn't equip you for very much else when the time comes to retire. As any televised interview with the likes of Gerrard, Pietersen, Vickery or Kelly Holmes will tell you, the brains of most performers are embedded firmly in their boots (although I did catch David James using the word ambivalence on Radio Five over the weekend. Eamonn Holmes had to ask him what that meant)).
A life in sport certainly does not qualify you for an afterlife in journalism. For proof of this, examine the collected works of Geoffrey Boycott, Jonathan Davies or (particularly) Matthew Pinsent. A J Liebling they ain't.
The one honourable exception is former famous footballer Tony Cascarino. His piece in The Times today on Christmas parties, prompted by the latest Manchester United festive cock-up (possibly literally) was both very funny and very informative.
Cascarino, in fact, writes better than his "countryman", and fellow competitor turned scribe, Paul Kimmage. And Kimmage ghosted his autobiography.

SOMETHING BORROWED, NOTHING NEW

Given that teams in the Scottish Premier League play each other about 20 times a year, Inverness Caledonian Thistle's 3-2 win over Celtic at the weekend is not in the shock/horror category. Such is the narrow insularity of Scottish football that what goes around tends to come around.

No surprises, either, that the Scottish Sun would raid its Mary Poppins cupboard again to resurrect a version of its "Super Caley go Ballistic" headline. This year's model read "Super Cowie goes Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious", Cowie being the Inverness striker who scored the winner.

Six years ago the Scottish sports desk's loopy chief sub Paul Hickson was hailed as a genius for the Sun's original "Super Caley" headline after Inverness beat Celtic in the Scottish Cup. Monday morning's offering probably came from the same source.

In fact, like a lot of things in The Sun, what its Scottish sports editor describes as the "sensational Sunsport headline" was nicked.

Some 35 years, both the Liverpool Daily Post and the old Manchester-based Daily Express used it to describe a display by Ian "Cally" Callaghan.

"Super Cally Goes Ballistic, QPR Atrocious" said the Echo.

If I were them, I'd sue Hickson, and The Sun, for plagiarism.

AN OFFER HE COULDN'T REFUSE

Apologies for that one, but since every other sports hack in the universe is busy trawling through old DVDs of The Godfather, Goodfellas and The Sopranos for Mafiosi-type similes to apply to the new England manager I thought I would get in on the act. Or ottenga dentro sull'atto, as they say in Palermo.

The Don, horse's heads, "it's only business", we've had the lot. And if we haven't, we soon will. Even the Sunday Times codded up a picture of Capello dressed as Peter Clemeza, complete with five o-clock shadow and George Raft's tommy gun. What price The Sun greeting his first win in charge with the headline: PASTA MASTER?

Fabio can expect a lot more of this in the months ahead. He will have to confront the reality that when the British media are discussing anything even vaguely Italian they will ignore the fact that this is a country that gave the world an Eternal City, Michelangelo, Verdi and Sophia Loren and concentrate instead on clever headlines about funny foods made with eggs and wheat or dodgy looking characters who mumble into their hands and love their families.

Capello does seem to have been given an easy ride so far. No snaps yet of his missus in a bikini or his kids getting pissed in public. Not even a photo of his ancient mama slaving over the meatballs back home in Gorizia.

The fact is that outside his playing and coaching record, no-one knows a thing about him. No previous whatsoever. When the Mail on Sunday attempted to enlighten us with "10 Things You Didn't Know about Fabio Capello" they ran out of facts by Number 7 which was the bombshell that "he has twice been replaced by Germans at Real Madrid".

Give us time, however. As soon as Capello loses against Lapland, or maybe Latvia, we'll off him and everyone remotely connected with him. He'll regret to his dying day not picking an English backroom staffer; he'll fry in hell for bringing back Beckham and we'll prove conclusively that his long lost uncle was Lucky Luciano.

He'll be sleeping with the fishes before you can say "Steve McClaren".

QUIET DAYS IN CLICHE . . . 2

More dead as a doornail definitions from sporting scribedom:

Shotstopper: Custodians begat goalkeepers who in their turn begat 'keepers who now, seemingly, have their own subdivisional description of their trade. Keepers now either command their areas or are specialist "shotstoppers". Like left-footed or right-footed players, they can't do both.

Temperamental: Generic description of foreign-born competitiors. As in "Latin temperament". Tagged on virtually everyone from South and Latin America, Italy and Spain who questions a decision, a line call, or who commits a foul.

Flying winger: Despite their name, wingers definitely can't fly. They may be able to run very fast, but here's the nub: THEIR FEET ARE ON THE GROUND.

Model professional: Boring bastard who doesn't drink and goes to bed before midnight.

Half-time cup of tea: Managers and coaches somehow manage to formulate great, game-changing tactical coups over the interval "cuppa". The match reporter, of course, hasn't a clue what was said that changed a half-time deficit into a winning lead, but knows the communal brew definitely played some part in it. As in: "Whatever Sir Alex said over the half-time cup of tea certainly did the trick." Or, occasionally: "Whatever Sir Alex put in his players' half-time cup of tea certainly did the trick."
Quite why the UK Tea Council hasn't hit on this as the perfect marketing ploy escapes me.

The Road to Wembley: Often with the supplement "starts here" and employed by every local sports journo from Bishop Auckland down to Barnet. Any user of this hackneyed piece of nonsense should be made to walk all the way.

Exclusive: Something we paid for.

More to follow . . .

SPORTING PSEUD OF THE WEEK

Two-ton Times man Martin Samuel ponders on one of the great mysteries of his life: where did Sven get that flower in his buttonhole when the two first met?

"So the origin of Eriksson’s poppy was a puzzle. He certainly did not collect it in Rome, home of Benito Mussolini, while Sweden, his birthplace, was one of a handful of European nations that maintained neutrality throughout the Second World War (Portugal, another of Eriksson’s adopted countries, did also). How finely attuned to English sensitivities he must have been, then, to have been in the country a matter of hours and already have communed with the locals in a poignant gesture of patriotism. "

HERALD OF FERRIE ENTERPRISE

Those among the Scottish rugby supporting public who buy The Herald (maybe 00000000000.1 per cent of the population) will be aware that Kevin Ferrie is the chronicler of their favourite game in their favourite newspaper.
Or, as he likes to be known, Kevin Ferrie, Chief Rugby Writer, with the implication that there is a small army of rugby-writing subordinates backing up The Chief.
In fact, god be thanked, there is only one.
Now he has a regular column, too, imaginatively entitled Ferrie on Thursday, with its further implication that Herald readers should bookmark this particular day as some sort of highlight of their week:
"Jings, it's Thursday, I'm gonna throw a sickie and go hame and self-abuse mesel over wee Kev's picture byline."
Ferrie, who has watched Braveheart 47 times, invented the term "Arrogant English" and employs it as often as he can when describing anyone or anything south of the border.
He hasn't, as yet, been referred to the Race Relations Board, but by all accounts came badly unstuck at the World Cup in 2003 when he turned his rantings on Australians and a local Aussie girl in particular. Her large boyfriend understandably took exception and Stirling's finest found himself airborne.
The spot he landed, or so the legend goes, is still known as "Kev's Corner of Cronulla". He never mentions this in his Thursday column.

FIELD OF BROKEN DREAMS

A sizeable proportion of baseball's glitterati have, according to a report published by former senator George Mitchell, been taking performance-enhancing drugs. America's national game is as bent as professional cycling. Say it ain't so, George.
Mitchell's report fingers luminaries like Barry Bonds, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada and, most damning of all, the iconic pitcher Roger Clemens, who is to American sport what, say, Sir Bobby Charlton is to British.
The breast beaters in the US media have been quick to condemn. Johnette Howard in Newsday was fairly typical: "The public was systematically deceived. The record book and rosters are polluted with cheats. This sport is filthy."
But the sport's apologists have also weighed in, questioning Mitchell's agenda and claiming a "conflict of interest" because he was born in Maine and there are no Boston Red Sox players listed. Clemens, incidentally, spent 12 years on the Red Sox roster.
There are, however, other questions for the punters here.
Why, for example, did it take a 74-year-old retired politician 18 months to out the baseball cheats when any writer with "insider knowledge" could have done the job in five minutes? Discovering that Bonds, Pettitte and Tejada were doping is like noticing that the sun rises in the east.
The answer is that specialist sports writers (cycling and cricket being the other prime examples) tend to keep their whistles in their pockets when scandal threatens to invade their own little province.
Tour de France journalists are not going to dive into a cycling cesspit and pull out the corpses when it could mean an end to their annual month-long jolly round one of the most civilised countries in Europe.
Specialist cricket writers, particularly the former players turned journos, also tend to fade into the background when anything remotely controversial crops up. They consistently covered up Freddie Flintoff's booze problem - common knowledge in the game - and went AWOL when Bob Woolmer was found dead in his Caribbean hotel room.
Baseball hacks as a whole, as has now been proven, are also guilty of a gross dereliction of duty.

MALLEY WALLY

Thanks to Frank Malley, the chief sportswriter for the Press Association, for his carefully crafted verdict on the next England manager. No sitting on the fence for Frank, the master of inescapeable logic:

"The fact is I do not know whether Capello, for all his medals, would make a good England manager. Neither does Barwick. In fact, nobody does for sure."

OH, SOUR OF SCOTLAND

Scottish sport may be in what may be charitably termed the doldrums (charitable in that the word implies a fresh wind may get up some time in the future) but does it really deserve the Scottish Press?
Of the indigenous newspapers, The Herald is laughably racist, Scotland on Sunday riddled with error (I once counted 36 literals in the sports section before giving up on the fifth page) and the Evening Times, with a one-eyed Bluenose in the editor's chair, cannot be relied on for anything approaching fair comment. The Record is, literally, a comic.
Of the Anglos with Scottish editions, The Sun is run by a Celtic-supporting cabal who, oddly, are vehemently anti-English - despite picking up ludicrously over-inflated payslips from London-based guvnors. The Mail and the Mirror are hidebound by miserly paginations decided elsewhere.
Which brings us to The Scotsman.
The lamentable state of this venerable institution is best mirrored in its veteran football hack, Glenn Gibbons. Like the newspaper he serves Gibbons is a former rabble rouser now in dotage. While the Hootsman shamelessly mimics the Guardian (for G2 read S2) Gibbons is an unashamed and vastly inferior clone of another Scottish-born scribe.
Here's Gibbons:
"Those to whom suspicion and scepticism come naturally would not be alone in concluding that the failure (of Celtic) to issue a categorical denial of the existence of the so-called loophole suggests that to do so would have been an abuse of the truth."
Hugh McIlvanney and Gibbons; are they related by any chance?
Like the newspaper, Gibbons, despite claiming to have friends in high places - notably Sir Alex Ferguson - hasn't broken a worthwhile story in years.
Like the newspaper, he is also hilariously parochial. The Scotsman manages to position the likes of Colin Montgomerie, David Coulthard, Lee McConnell or the tennis-playing Murrays at the centre of every sporting drama, despite the fact that they are basically bit players.
Gibbons is titled Chief Football Writer. In effect, he is Chief Old Firm Writer.

QUIET DAYS IN CLICHE . . . 1

This is a random list of the worst, and by definition the most widely used, in sports writing. The cliche, of course, being the last resort of hacks who can't write. This should also serve as a guide for anyone wishing to read between the lines in a sports report.

The Beautiful Game: a non-sequitur, given that it contains the likes of Nicolas Anelka, Joey Barton and Harry Redknapp.

Hitting the woodwork: Goalposts are no longer made of wood.

Piledriver (as in shot): Piledrivers drive things into the ground.

Elusive stand-off: Shit scared of getting tackled.

No-nonsense defender: Dirty bastard.

Eccentric (usually goalkeepers: Stark staring bonkers.

Enigmatic: Doesn't talk to the Press.

Doesn't suffer fools gladly: Won't talk to the Press.

An insider/source close to the club told me: No-one would go on the record, so I'm making this up.

The worst kept secret in the game: I missed the story, but knew about it all along, honest.

One of the nicest men in the game: Once said good morning to me in an hotel corridor.

Power-packed (as in sprinter): Steroid junkie.

Too little, too late: Stand-by last par when my deadline's due.

The late, great (Bill Shankly, Jock Stein etc): For some reason, dear departed sporting persons are never just late or just great but always late and great.

Legend: By definition a legend is: the tale of a mythical or supernatural being, something to be read, a New Wave of British Heavy Metal band, a 1976 Broadway play by American playwright Samuel Taylor, a famous novel, or the greatest hits collection of Bob Marley & The Wailers.
It is certainly not Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

More To Follow .....

SPORTING PSEUD OF THE WEEK

Congratulations to Simon Barnes of The Times, inaugural winner of this prestigious award. The prize is a boxed set of two books - a Roget's Thesaurus and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He may have trouble disappearing up his own arse with these, but he will no doubt try. As this snippet illustrates too well:

"He (Giggs) has just scored his 100th league goal for Manchester United, so it’s a nice moment to applaud him as he lifts his bat, and to muse on the idiosyncratic gallop – at full pace, he is recognisable from half a mile away – and that expression, seen far too often, alas, of profound and innocent bewilderment because the ball that he has struck has failed to find the goal."

THE CROAKING VOICE

Try this for size:

"Alternatively, of course, some may feel it isn’t necessary to possess the skills of a Bletchley Park code-breaker to discern that when newspapers say the Special One is overwhelmingly the people’s choice, what they might mean is that he was voted in by a landslide at an editorial conference."
The words, correct in substance but stylishly corrupt, are those of the Sunday Times "Voice of Sport" Hugh McIlvanney, who more and more reads like a man who is running out of tricks to pull out of his favourite box. It's sad to see a champion so diminished.
McIlvanney should maybe take heed of past articles, often written by himself, in which fading greats are gently chided for going on too long.

SEVE OR SEVVY

For over a decade now The Sun has persisted in calling Severiano Ballesteros Sevvy, rather than Seve. This despite entreaties from Seve himself via his agent, and evidence everywhere else (see pictures) that Sevvy is, in fact, Seve. The Sun, being The Sun, has blissfully ignored them.
I have my own theory about how this came about.
Most tabloids, given the restraint of word counts in headlines ruthlessly abbreviate the names of sportsmen and women. Sometimes to ludicrous extents. The best example I can think of is the former Glasgow Rangers captain Lorenzo Amoruso who (before he left the city suffering a case of mistaken identity) found himself titled in The Scottish Sun as "Amoro", "Loro", "Amo" and even, when things got really tight "Am". If he had hung around long enough he would have found himself up there in lights as "A".
But sometimes nicknames can be too short and my belief is that in the case of The Sun on the first occasion the deeds of the young Ballesteros required a headline it ran across a single column with a count of five. Seve was a character shy so he became Sevvy and has been, in The Sun at least, ever since. Now you know.

THE BOY DAVID

After an appropriate period of disassociation by his newspaper, David Walsh, the loquacious Limerick leprechaun (yes, I once worked as a sub on The Sun) is back at the Sunday Times. Walsh had to take an enforced Sabbatical from the ST after he got his arse kicked by Lance Armstrong over false doping allegations. In the meantime, Walsh rattled off Lawrence Dallaglio's "autobiography" before returning to the ST as Chief Sportswriter. Nice work if you can get it.
Walshy has a lot to answer for. For a start he begat a protege called Paul Kimmage and numerous other Irish writers who slavishly copied the Walsh style who in turn had slavishly copied it from the likes of Bob Woodward. You know the sort of thing: "It was 2.30am and Lance Armstrong was finding it hard to sleep. It had not been a good day. At 7.30pm he had taken a call from the brilliant investigative Irish sportswriter David Walsh. What he heard was to change his life forever. After that, sleep was out of the question. He rose and poured himself a coffee."
Like a script from a B-movie.
One thing has always puzzled me about Walsh's campaign to out Armstrong. Why wasn't he as zealous in the pursuit of the known dopers?
He could try his countryman Sean Kelly who (unlike Armstrong) failed a dope test in his heyday as a competitor. For brief documentary evidence of this read the book "Kelly" ... by, erm, David Walsh.

TIPPING NOT ALLOWED

It's a requirement of any sports expert's pre-write to any major sporting event to offer a forecast. In other words, Woods will win the Open, Federer will win Wimbledon, South Africa the Rugby World Cup and Ricky Hatton will ... well, we'll leave that one for now.
Sports hacks are still sports hacks because they couldn't tip the sun to rise in the east. If they could get things right occasionally, they would be happily retired - to the Seychelles, Bali, or maybe Alicante.
Of the racing tipsters I know, all consistently claim to have insider information from "stable sources". It seemingly never occurs to them to use this knowledge to their own ends
Most of them, in fact, are only a couple of grand of gambling debt away from a kneecapping, thanks to their abuse of credit accounts. And of course their inability to back a winner.
The lesson doesn't seem to have sunk in, judging by the pre-fight punditry in Las Vegas over the weekend. The most high profile (ie the loudest) of the boxing "experts", Colin Hart of The Sun and Steve Bunce of The Independent set all known logic aside and went for Hatton to beat Mayweather. (Frank Keating, the wise old dog, saw sense).
The best excuse you can find for this lunacy - and Hart and Bunce were not alone - is that they got carried away by Hatton's ability to talk a good fight or climbed aboard the high speed bandwagon driven by his fans.
Or maybe they just had money on him.