DESPERATE ABOUT DAN

The specialist rugby writers are like the long-serving cast of Coro, Eastenders or Neighbours. They are the journalistic equivalents of the actor who plays Ken Barlow, smug and content in their own little world and without the ability, or the ambition, to move on to new challenges. Most of them have been around as long as William Webb Ellis.
When someone like Stephen Jones of the Sunday Times quotes a CV that includes something like five World Cups, 20 Five/Six Nations and six Lions tours my reaction is not to admire his staying power but simply to think: "You sad bastard."
Unlike football, there is little or no competition among the national rugby union press.
For years they had been staying in the same hotels, attending the same press conferences, interviewing the same players . . . and producing the same stories. They all sing from a universal hymn sheet written and supplied by the various clubs or unions. They are corralled and shepherded like tourists in the Kremlin.
For proof of this, we had only to listen on Saturday to Robert Kitson, of the Guardian, who made a rare TV appearance to give his views on the Danny Cipriani affair from Murrayfield where a Cipriani-less England were taking on Scotland.
Asked for some insight into the dropping of the Wasps wunderkind, the best Kitson could offer was: "Well, we'll have to wait for the facts to emerge."
Excuse me, Mr Kitson, but isn't that your job? Aren't journalists employed to uncover the truth and inform readers? Or are you paid simply to swan around from Rome to Paris to Edinburgh every 12 months, with the odd tour to sunny climes in between?
So far, all we have had from rugby journos - and ex-players playing at journos - is ill-informed comment about the rights and wrongs of dropping Cipriani, without a single fact.
Kitson's presence in Edinburgh - and that of every other "chief rugby writer" - also begged the question: Why? The Scotland-England match was between two also-rans and Wales were playing for the Triple Crown in Dublin on the same day.
Still, the Calcutta Cup clash did yield one of sports broadcasting's greatest faux pas, relayed live to millions of viewers.
"And over to Jill, down there where it's wet and sticky," said Eddie Butler.
Touchline interviewer Jill Douglas's husband, I am delighted to point out, played for Scotland and is somewhat younger, and bigger, than Butler.

A BEEF ABOUT ANGUS

Can someone at the Independent - preferably with more than a couple of years in journalism - PLEASE take Angus Fraser to one side and demonstrate how to compose an intro? And while you are at it, Simon Kelner, can you also tell him that any half decent writer should be aware that adjectives are the curse of modern sportswriting?
Here's the former England trundler on Ryan Sidebottom's Hamilton hat-trick:
"Ryan Sidebottom became the eleventh England bowler to take a Test hat-trick in a remarkable spell of bowling that produced a sensational turnaround in the first Test."
Eleventh? Hardly unique, nor even particularly remarkable.
Like many of his ilk - and cricket's press boxes are full of them - Fraser attempts to mask poor writing with useless statistics, none of which belong in an opening paragraph.

WAGERS OF SIN

Saturday's "guest predictor" in the Guardian (if you haven't caught this it's a bit of typical Guardian furniture in which notables are paid to make fools of themselves with some sporting soothsaying) was Krishnan Guru-Murthy who, as it turned out, was not a Guru at all.
He had Chelsea to win 5-1 at Barnsley, Manchester United to beat Portsmouth 2-0, Liverpool to beat Newcastle 1-0 and Blackburn to beat Fulham 2-0.
Now you know why the Guru is still slaving away as a humble newsreader on Channel 4, rather than sunning himself in happy retirement in the Seychelles.

BOXING CLEVER

Provincial newspapers have always had to struggle by on minimal editorial resources. It shows in the quality of their writing staff and it shows in the breadth of their coverage.
A glance at the rugby pages in today's Scotland on Sunday is a microcosm (and the SoS microcosm is getting even more micro by the week) of the problems sports editors in the sticks face under the strictures of the bean counters upstairs..
As with every other native (and that includes players, fans and coaches) charged with following the fortunes of Scotland, "chief rugby writer" Iain Morrison can't let an intro go by without a mention of the brave boys in blue and the number of "positives" to take from another thumping defeat. Morrison is an abysmal chronicler of events and despite having played for his country, and presumably having a few contacts, still can't produce a half-decent news story. He is as much a journalist as, say, the newpapers' statutory columnist Nathan Hines, whose ghosted piece also concentrated on the "positives" of the Dublin drubbing.
Morrison shared the stage with former SoS sports editor Richard "Freebie" Bath who maintains some sort of droit de seigneur there and provided the match report of the France v England match from Paris.
I say provided, because it goes without saying that Bath wasn't in Paris; he was 1,000 miles away in Edinburgh alongside a TV box and thus, with the benefit of the BBC's prolonged action replays, able to inform us that Jamie Noon knocked on in the build-up to England's first try.
I was in the Stade de France and this was impossible to spot with the naked eye in live action.
So my newspaper (and several others) spent around £1,000 (and I haven't done my exes yet) on a weekend in Paris only to be "scooped" by a hack who wasn't even there.
Let's pray the bean counters don't spot this, or we'll all be covering major live sport from our living rooms.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Who on earth needs Frank Gorshin, Mike Yarwood or Alistair McGowan when you can tune in to BBC Sport?
"Super Saturday" kicked off with Football Focus and the great Garth Crooks, who does a Burt Lancaster (as Elmer Gantry) which has to be seen, and heard, to be believed. Elmer was succeeded by Sir Matthew Pinsent, impersonating an investigative reporter, and on the loose in Beijing at licence payers' expense.
Backed up by Gabby Yorath dolled up in her winter finery a la Julie Christie in Dr Zhivago, Matty gave us the lowdown on Human Growth Hormone, how to get it, and where, along with the startling revelation that it can't be detected.
Quite apart from the fact that I can get this insider's info (and a month's supply) with a couple of clicks of a mouse and without leaving my seat, if Matty really wanted to give us a new slant on a doper's Olympics all he had to do was have a word with Jurgen Grobler, his former GB rowing coach who knows a thing or two about this subject. On then to the rugger with Sonia (Hyacinth) McLoughlin. Sonia's interviewing technique consists of shouting, at around 115 decibels, one of two questions: How disappointed are you, Nick/Frank/Brian? Or, how delighted are you, Warren/Eddie?
The girl will go far, but probably not as far as Jill Douglas, unsurpassable exponent of the How? question.
Finally, from Paris came the curtain act, Laurel and Hardy, aka Eddie Butler and Brian Moore. One thing has always puzzled me about Eddie. How can he spend 80 minutes commentating on an international rugby match while at the same time producing 1,000 words or so for the following morning's Observer? Or does he simply, as I suspect, concentrate on his newspaper work and get Alistair McGowan in to call the match?

STARSHIT TROOPERS

Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing at the Daily Star? Does the sports desk ever converse with the news desk, or vice versa? Are editorial conferences spent on anything else apart from debating the size of the bazookas on page one?
Like, for example, content?
Page One today reveals that Cheryl Cole is set to spoil "love rat" husband Ashley's big Wembley day and shun the Carling Cup final between Chelsea and Spurs at Wembley tomorrow.
The back page (just across the fold) reveals that Cole isn't going to play in the Carling Cup final between Chelsea and Spurs at Wembley tomorrow.
Is there anyone still alive on the Star, that disabled asteroid which should have been shot down long ago?

HEADLINE NEWS

When I started out in this daft business the first lesson hammered into me by my first sports editor was that when you wrote a headline the words had to be reflect what was in the intro. The second was that you always include a name.
Whichever Sunday Times sub came up with England Can't Cut the Mustard to illustrate England's one-day cricket defeat by New Zealand got it right on the second point and wrong on the first. Mustard wasn't mentioned until the third or fourth par and the story wasn't about him.
But which sub could resist the possibilities offered by his name?
There are obviously sportsmen and women who lend themselves to abuse by production journalists stricken by pun fever - and Mustard is one of them. Other prime examples are anyone called Bird, Rose or King. The former Celtic player Rafael Scheidt also comes to mind. There are just as obviously other names that will remain immune to puns, notably Mustard's team-mate Dimitri Mascarenhas and Celtic's Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.
The greatest news pun headline never written (as yet) is the one to announce the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu - Ta Ta Tutu.
The greatest sports pun we will never see - regrettably since their careers did not overlap - concerns the dream scenario of a punch-up between two psychotic second row rugby fowards, Danny Grewcock of England and Jean Condom of France.
The Englishman is a karate black belt and would undoubtedly have won, but I guarantee the headline, Grewcock Fills In Condom, wouldn't have appeared in the Sunday Times.

YOU'RE POTTY, MOTTY

I gave the England v Switzerland match two minutes on Wednesday having vowed that if anyone disturbed the minute's silence for the victims of Munich I'd switch off and never watch another football match again.
Full marks to the Wembley fans, no bother at all.
I still switched off, though, in protest at the antics of BBC commentator, John Motson, who was still going through the team line-ups 10 seconds into the tribute.
Is he senile, or just stupid? Whatever, BBC Sports has just lost another viewer.

SPORTING PSEUD OF THE WEEK (AGAIN)

I thought I had read every conceivable variation of meaningless tosh written about Munich '58, but I'd forgotten we hadn't heard from Simon Barnes in the Times. Here's his latest session of verbal wanking: "Sport is life. It is the most vivid form of being alive, at any rate in public. Sport's triumphs and disasters, joys and sorrows, shame and glory have an intensity impossible to find elsewhere on a regular basis and it acquires an added meaning and importance from sport's essential triviality. Sport may be said to be the precise opposite of death."

If you have never met Simon Barnes, let me tell you that he has a fop's ponytail and favours white suits and boaters. He looks like a prick - and writes like one.

But at least this latest offering has made him Sporting Pseud of the Week ... for the second time.

RESTING IN PIECES

There is not a lot new to say about Munich '58, but most newspapers have had a good try this week - and it has not made edifying reading.
Survivors and families have been wheeled out for various anniversaries almost non-stop down the years, most of them with little complaint and with the infinite patience which has become their trademark. The occasion of the 50th anniversary, tomorrow, found them under ghoulish siege.
Bobby Charlton, Harry Gregg, Albert Scanlon, Bill Foulkes and even Kenny Morgans (the forgotten survivor as most of the tabloids labelled him quite justifiably) have all repeated, interminably, what they have said so many times in the past about the crash.
So have the sons of Johnny Berry and Roger Byrne, the daughter of pilot Captain James Thain, the brother of Liam Whelan and the sister of David Pegg. As you would expect from humble and gracious people, their recollections have been both measured and moving.
Inevitably, however, given the age we live in there have been other casualties - most notably those items foreign to most tabloids, the facts. To take the worst of many:
The Daily Mail on Saturday spread a fine piece by Geoffrey Wheatcroft across two of its feature pages, accompanied by a photograph of "the Busby Babes boarding the flight to Munich from which many of them would never return".
Very dramatic, except that among others on the plane steps were assistant manager Jimmy Murphy and trainer Jack Crompton who were not on the last tragic flight. Nor were Ian Greaves, Alex Dawson and Wilf McGuinness among the more recognisable of the players on the picture. The blond quiff of Albert Quixall, who was signed after Munich, also stands out.
Most of us found an error of this magnititude and such basic incompetence hard to credit in a national newspaper and rang the Daily Mail to tell them so. Some of us also posted comments on the newspaper's website. It goes without saying that none of these were published - although a new, correct, photograph did materialise magically there today.
Among the others, the Daily Express still, as I write, has a picture on its website of a youthful Albert Scanlon "who died after the plane crashed" - despite a reader's correction posted underneath.
The Sun, inevitably, weighed in with a piece from an eye witness "exonerating" Captain Thain after he had been blamed by the German authorities for not de-icing the aircraft's wings.
In fact, the pilot was cleared 40 years ago by a subsequent British inquiry who decided that slush on the runway was the cause.
The quotes from the German rescuer eye witness were simply lifted straight from Stanley Stewart's excellent book, Air Disasters, first published in 1986.

A LOAD OF OLD BOWLS

From Nick Halling "in Phoenix" for the Independent comes more evidence that the reportage of indigenous sport should be left to the natives.
We can laugh as long and as loud as we like at the efforts of the Yanks to trivialise the technicalities of football (sorry, soccer), but Halling and the rest of the Brits who are hanging on for dear life to the rear wheels of the NFL bandwagon sure do redress the balance, thus:
"New York's defence made Brady's life a misery throughout, forcing him to throw before he was ready, sacking him five times, and knocking him to the ground. As a result, the ice-cool pass-master had his worst game of the season."
I'm not an aficionado of American Football, but I understand it well enough to know that a sacking invariably means a quarter-back is knocked to the ground.
As for the "ice-cool pass-master", the last time I heard that phrase applied to anyone was in a red-top obit for Johnny Haynes.

BOB'S YOUR CARBUNCLE

Jeff Powell, the befrizzed Australian who, impossible as it may seem - given that he is not exactly Mr Popularity in the business - is still writing for the Daily Mail, reckons he can trace the decline of Liverpool back to a seminal moment 34 years ago.
The day Bill Shankly retired, says Powell, was the day "Liverpool began selling their soul".
If this writer would care to key the words "Bob Paisley" into Google he would find the following: from 1975 to 1983 Liverpool, under Paisley, won the European Cup three times and were League champions on six occasions. For good measure they also lifted the UEFA Cup once and the Charity Shield five times.
Among the minor baubles, Paisley also took home the League Cup three times and set an all-time record of 85 home games unbeaten, in all competitions. This run included 63 league matches, also a league record, and stretched over three years from January 1978 to January 1981.
Hardly a decline, and if that constituted a selling of the club's soul there's a lot to be said for flogging off this particular asset.
But then this is a writer who has his own agenda in the matter of the most successful British manager ever.
Paisley disliked Powell with a passion - "I don't want that bloody so-and-so down here" was the standard reaction of the miner's son when he discovered Powell was due at Anfield for a home fixture.
Like many shunned tabloid hacks, Powell took it personally - and still does.

THE CAPED CRUSADER

As if the Toon Army hadn't enough problems.
Racing eccentric (nutter to you and me) John McCririck, it turns out, is a Newcastle fan and has been "most of my life". At least that what he told Sky Sports News today.
Punctuated by cries of "Howay the Lads", the obligatory mention of the new Messiah and , tooled up in a black and white jersey, McCririck was in the sort of full tic-tac rant mode that has made him so many friends down the years and made him a shoo-in for TV trash like Celebrity Big Brother and Hell's Kitchen.
McCririck, on the face of it, does not seem the archetypal Newcastle supporter. I've visited St James' Park a few times over the last 20 years and I've yet to catch anyone there kitted out in deerstalker and cape.
Not even McCririck, who admitted he lives in Surrey, hasn't been to many matches and owes his allegiance to an unnamed uncle.
A long-range celebrity fan, then. He'd surely be better off with Eamon Holmes, Zoe Ball, Angus Deayton, Bertie Aherne and the small army of born-again celeb Reds at Manchester United.
At least he could bet on them winning things occasionally.

MORT D'KEEGAN

"It gives me enormous pressure to welcome Kevin Keegan."
Well, yes, Chris Mort, chairman of Newcastle United, it sure does. Perhaps he meant pleasure, but there again maybe Mr Mort is a student of Freud.
Or maybe like a lot of the Toon supporters looking on from the Shearer Bar, he'd had a few Newcy Broons.
In vino veritas, and all that.

THEY HAVANT A CLUE

The return of Kevin Keegan to Tyneside certainly buried the bad news on Fabio Capello for the FA (I always wondered what happened to Jo Moore; she's alive and well and working in the next office to Brian Barwick in Soho Square).
Unfortunately, for little Havant and Waterlooville, it also buried the good news about them.
The greatest night in the history of the Conference South side was washed away under a tidal wave of black and white bullshit, submerged under wall-to-wall headlines about the Third Coming, the Talk of the Toon and even, believe it or not, God on the Tyne (thanks to the religious affairs correspondent at the Sun for that one).
By any normal standards the defeat of Swansea - and the prospect of a fourth round FA Cup tie at Liverpool - was the sports story of the day. Newspapers should have hailed the achievement of the impossible; not documented the inevitable.
I would have bet my house on Keegan going back to Newcastle. His carefully choreographed populism will always strike a chord there and it also makes commercial sense for the club judging by the queues around Gallowgate on the night of his Coming.
In any case, there is probably no-one else around stupid enough to take the job on.
No excuses then, for this morning's multi-page documentation on the life and times of a multi-failed football manager.
Like Kevin Keegan, we have all been there, done that and bought the Toon shirt.

NOTHING BUT A HOUND DOG

As an example of superficial sports writing technique this takes some beating - Paul Kimmage going all ga-ga in the Sunday Times over Russian tennis princess Maria Sharapova:

"And that’s when it happens. Suddenly, inexplicably, I start to envy her dog. I want to be Dolce. I want to die and come back as that fluffy Pomeranian pooch and for the next five minutes I completely derail. It’s like that scene from American Beauty when Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is watching his daughter’s cheerleading rally and is mesmerised by her cute, blonde friend. I gazed at Sharapova with eyes as big as dinner plates and was suddenly skiing off piste ."

Putty in Maria's hands, you might say. This, and another 2,000 words on the same theme, wins Kimmage the Sporting Pseud of the Week award - the first Irishman to be so blessed.
It's also a good excuse to use a picture of Maria.

SO LONG, MARION

Neither Steve Cram or Brendan Foster are journalists, but as Olympians they should be able to offer cogent comment and opinion on "their" sport. Don't hold your breath.
Like many former participants, whose livelihoods depend on propagating the image of a particular branch of sport, they have mastered the art of fudge and tend to vanish whenever anything remotely controversial crops up. As has been noted here before, specialist cricket and cycling writers fall into the same category.
The news that multi-bemedalled Olympic sprinter Marion Jones had been sent down for six months by a judge in New York for lying about steroids abuse coincided with Saturday's coverage of a cross country event in Edinburgh, hosted by Cram and Foster. A golden opportunity, you would have thought, for a spot of analysis.
In fact, their take on the Jones case lasted about 20 seconds, about a tenth of the time allotted to the news that Foster had just turned 60 and certainly far less than numerous plugs for the Great North Run in October.
Foster is chief executive of Nova International, the sports marketing company that organises the race; Cram commentates on it for the BBC. What little good name athletics has left, you could say, is important to both men.
Jones, her drug-taking and her prison sentence was an irritation - and one they all but ignored.

KELVIN THE SPORTS FREAK

During his 13 years as the editor of the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie showed little, or no, interest in sport - except on the occasions it became the news.
Events like Heysel, bungs, the pants down activities of Premiership footballers or Gazza's various meltdowns would turn Macca into a temporary sports fan. But the whereabouts of Hillsborough - let alone the name of the team that plays there - would still be a mystery to him but for the fact that a large number of people died there in 1989.
Now, if you believe his Sun column, he is an expert. In between the predictable rants about travellers and Muslims, MacKenzie also has definitive sporting opinion on everything from the Harbhajan Singh affair to a new book about the life and times of Brian Clough. He has got tips for the Premiership title and wise counsel for sacked managers. Macca has been a closet sports fan, with a typewriter, all along.
But of course he's not, and never has been. Anyone who knows MacKenzie will tell you that he doesn't have an opinion about very much at all, and certainly not about sport. Like many columnists, he reads the news bulletins and then attempts to reflect a populist opinion. Pound for pound, it's probably one of the best jobs in the world. The production of his £100k a year column probably takes him three hours a week at the most.
MacKenzie is now 61 and not exactly representative of what the Sun believes is its target audience. But it's pleasing to see the newspaper looking after one of its own in his dotage; as good as a pension, really.
MacKenzie, however, should really have resisted the temptation to prove to the rest of world something of which journalists have been aware all along. Like most newspaper editors who spend large parts of their careers telling others how it should be done, he can't actually write.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

This is the image chosen by Times online to illustrate the news that the Gloucester wing Lesley Vainikolo had been named in the England rugby union squad. Vainikolo was born in Tonga and used to play rugby league for Bradford Bulls.

Does anyone else think that the Times online picture editor is either a) racist; b) a Twickenham debenture holder or c) both?

UNDER THE COVERS

Like the sport they serve, specialist cricket writers work to a set of rules and codes unintelligible to much of the the rest of the world.

As has been pointed by Peter Whiby in his excellent media critiques in the Guardian, the majority of them regard themselves as the equivalent of rather grand theatre critics. They are there to analyse and muse on what is going on in the field, but without the responsibility, or the inclination, to report on what is going on off it.

Most of them went absent without leave at the time of the Flintoff pedalo affair and their collective performance after Bob Woolmer was found dead in his Caribbean hotel room was a disgrace to the profession which they profess to serve. Most newspapers had to send in the pinch hitters - qualified reporters and journalists - to take over the messy business of finding an angle, doing some research and gathering quotes, leaving the specialists to ramble on interminably about the Bob Woolmer I Knew.

The current Harbhajan Singh/Andrew Symonds sledging row also constitutes a marvellous story but, tinged with controversy as it is, one which had the cricket writing gentry diving for the covers. The nitty gritty when it broke was detailed in the main by agencies or newspaper desk jockeys. Fairly typical was the Guardian's approach, with their version of events given by Richard Nathanson, their "European Football Correspondent".

Three days late, the likes of Pringers, CMJ and the rest emerged to pass comment - before disappearing back into their wine cellars.
Pringle will be remembered forever as the England player who got lost twixt the middle and pavilion after losing his wicket in a Test match; Martin-Jenkins is best known as the composer of the worst intros in the history of journalism.
They are the worst of a very bad bunch. No wonder the late England coach Duncan Fletcher loathed cricket writers.

SPORTING PSEUD OF THE WEEK

As any author will tell you, it's next to impossible to earn a mention for your pride and joy in the review sections of a national newspaper.
Unless you work for that newspaper, that is.
No problems, then, for Jon Henderson of the Observer who was granted the best part of half a page - in the Observer - to plug his offering, Best of British: Hendo's Sporting Heroes.
I may be alone in this, but I am not really interested in the choice of hero offered by anyone calling himself Hendo, but I was transfixed by his justification for embarking on such a large scale cuttings job, an intro which read: "Choose 100 men and women for a book of British sporting heroes, said the publisher." (my italics).
In other words, it was the publisher's idea.
This is a laughable conceit for, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of the business will tell you, publishers never approach authors with ideas. It's simply not in their make-up. It's the wannabe author who has to do the bowing, scraping and pleading, particularly if, like Henderson, you don't have a track record as a published author.
He may not get many other positive reviews - cronyism has its limits, even in journalism - but by way of consolation Henderson is our Sporting Pseud of the Week.
Now he can rejoice in the other truism of publishing: that in this game there is no such thing as bad publicity.

MISERYSIDE

"STINGY KOP" cries the Sun in reporting that Liverpool have refused to donate their share of the gate money from tomorrow's third round FA Cup tie - around £200,000 - to "cash-strapped" opponents, Luton.
A classic piece of Sun dissemination, this. Firstly, there is no precedent for bigger clubs gifting gate money to less fortunate brethren - Luton are currently in administration - and certainly no precedent for one section of a football ground having the means, or opportunity, to do that.
If it had been Manchester United in Liverpool's boots would the headline have read: "STINGY STRETFORD END"?
The same Sun report informs us, as a sort of afterthought, that "the Anfield outfit are also facing financial troubles" which sounds like a reasonable justification for Liverpool hanging on to every penny.
Missing from this piece, too, was the information that Luton have been in administration three times in nine years. In the case of this club, there may be an argument against throwing good money after bad.

Why would one newspaper choose to view one football club, and one community, in such a prejudiced fashion?
For the answer we need to go back 18 years, to Hillsborough and the Sun's lurid and misguided coverage of that disaster. In the wake of that tragedy, the newspaper's sales on Merseyside went into meltdown, costing them over £50m in circulation over the next two decades.

Having long since given up the frail hope of recovering their decimated revenue The Sun reverted to its time-honoured modus operandi; anyone who won't be our friend, must be our enemy. Thus, the systematic scoffing at all things Scouse.
If Luton do go under, it will all be Liverpool's fault of course - at least in the eyes of the Sun.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELLS

In an extended rant against sports perceived as rich men's playthings, a Guardian Leninspart, Steven Wells, takes a swing at Tiger Woods' favoured game, telling us that "Golf is the quicksand at the end of the existentialist rainbow, sucking the unwary ageing hipster into a half-life of gin-pissed conversations about house prices, airport car parking and immigrants."
Strange how writers who regard themselves as reactionaries can't resist the word existentialist - or the mention of gin.
I haven't seen a contribution in The Guardian before by Steven Wells and I suspect may not see one again, so let's savour another morsel: "Personally I am in favour of banning all activities that give the rich pleasure - hunting, shooting, fishing, skiing, yachting, rowing, polo and rugby union - for the sole reason that they give the rich pleasure."
That should go down a bomb with toffy-nosed gits like Jack Charlton, Franz Klammer, Ellen MacArthur, Steve Redgrave and the natives of Bridgend's Brewery Field or The Gnoll, Neath.

BARTON: THE INSIDE STORY

In the gloating manner unique to The Sun, Anthony France (or rather the sub-editor who wrote the story for him) reports that "jailed soccer bad boy" Joey Barton nightly cries himself to sleep behind bars.
The newspaper's back bench, with a strapline "All Together Now, AAh!" invites us to join in their gruesome sneeralong.
The story has all the ingredients: a list of the player's misdemeanours, a note of his annual salary (along with his weekly one lest we fail to get the message) and the disclosure that five days into his remand sentence, he has already been confronted by a fellow lag, possibly a Sunderland supporter, who branded him "the scum of the earth".
France, without a trace of irony, quotes a "prison insider" as his source.
Forced to spend New Year's Eve in Walton jail, without actually having been found guilty of anything, I reckon I might just shed a tear or two at night. What is more, I would probably attempt to ingratiate myself with fellow inmates in the hope they wouldn't molest me in the communal showers. In the eyes of The Sun, this is another justification for labelling him a CRY BABY.
Barton was involved in the sort of seasonal scuffle to which a number of journalists, if they peered into their pasts, could truthfully plead guilty. Unlike one senior reporter in The Sun's newsroom, he has never actually killed anyone. The judge who granted him bail today plainly recognised that, too.
At least Barton can now safely cry himself to sleep back in what The Sun - again without discernible irony - calls "his luxury home in Widnes".

PLUS CA CHANGE

Foreign newspapers have always been a rich source for the sort of speculative sports story in which we specialise over here.
Armed with Babel Fish and a few keywords (Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, Capello or England for starters), UK-based hacks regularly raid the online pages of La Gazzetta dello Sport, L'Equipe or El Pais for titbits.
This week, with the January transfer window imminent, they hit pay dirt when Nicolas Anelka gave a long interview to L'Equipe during which he mentioned the attractions of a move to Chelsea.
The interview was intended for the newspaper's Saturday magazine but L'Equipe, in their guileless way, flagged it up in advance. The British press pounced and in their inimitable fashion gave the story its "legs". Talks between the Bolton and Chelsea chairmen were invented and a price - around £10m - agreed by hack consensus. The justification for the move - Didier Drogba's injury - was also carefully logged.
It goes without saying that most of the UK redtops - and even The Times - claimed the "Anelka Bound for Chelsea" story as an exclusive. The Telegraph excepted, not one of them acknowledged L'Equipe as the source.
It was not, to be honest, a great story. In the case of Anelka, we have all been here before and despite his reputation as an eight-club man, not one newspaper wondered if the player may just have had an agenda of his own.
Deliberately or otherwise, the UK sports press also missed a couple of other salient points in L'Equipe's article that should have rung a few alarm bells.
One was that Anelka's agent, Doug Pingisi, was quoted in the piece. Something on the lines that "Nicolas is ready for a club to match his lofty talents" - familiar agentese for "ten per cent of £10m, make my day". Anelka's combined transfer fees, thanks to Pingisi, currently total £66m.
Anelka also told L'Equipe that he would consider moving back to Sven-led Manchester City and that "it wouldn't hurt me to stay with Bolton", statements that were also ignored for the simple reason that they weakened the Chelsea angle.
Anelka, incidentally, signed a four-year contract with Bolton earlier this season, played for Bolton last night and earned praise from his manager Gary Megson for "chasing a ball that he lost himself with five minutes to go".
In every sense then, the boy done good.

QUIET DAYS IN CLICHE . . . 3

More candidates kept in the the sports desk database for the appropriate occasion:

The goalkeeper got a big hand to it: Has anyone come across a goalkeeper with small hands?

Pivot: Central midfielder, stand-off, basketball centre, take your pick.

Braveheart: a Scottish loser.

Rumbled over the line: Exclusive to prop forwards scoring a try.

Burly: prop forwards in general (as if lanky ones exist).

A great player from tee to green: Golfer who can't putt.

He'll love, just love it, if he wins/loses: De rigueur in any article about Kevin Keegan.


And a few faithful stand-by headlines:

Kop that: Liverpool win at home.

Red menace: Liverpool or Manchester United join the title race.

Rovers return: Blackburn player back from injury.

I'm Gunner do the trick: Arsenal striker's pre-match boast.

Wolves at the door: Bad times at Molineux.

Happy Wanderers: Bolton win at last.

Seasiders: Any team with a home ground a mile from the sea (around 157 of them at the last count).

Numbered cliches:

Three and easy: A 3-0 win.

Phwoar! (usually in the Sun); A 4-0 win.

Bunch of fives: Applied to teams who lose 5-0.

Five-star: Applied to teams who win 5-0.

Hit for six: Someone's lost 6-0.

Seventh heaven: Team wins 7-0.

Pieces of eight: An 8-0 victory.

Cloud Nine: Ditto, for 9-0.


Finally, commiserations - and best wishes for a speedy recovery - to Andy Dunn of the News of the World who spent New Year's Day in hospital after downing a massive cocktail of cliche on Sunday: "Sir Alex Ferguson not only threw the book, a verbal volley and anything he could lay his hands on at his partying stars ... he threw down the gauntlet."