The biggest lesson in the Leicester City story is you can be a winner and be nice...

THERE are plenty of lessons to be drawn from Leicester City writing the greatest sporting story ever told.

From now on, all of us – from the so-called experts in the media to the ordinary observer down the pub – will be much more careful in declaring that anyone taking part in a sporting contest is a “no-hoper”.

Those at the grass roots of sport will be inspired to dream that it really is possible to reach the pinnacle, just like Jamie Vardy did in rising from non-league football to become a Premier League champion and player of the year.

And there will be a greater appreciation of the value of teamwork – that a group of athletes working hard for each other can overcome individuals blessed with greater natural talent.

But the lesson which runs much deeper than the game of football, or sport in general for that matter, is about management and the way people are treated.

A year ago, Nigel Pearson was Leicester’s manager and he became embroiled in a cringe-worthy spat over his treatment of a journalist called Ian Baker. Pearson found himself on the defensive after a 3-1 defeat to Chelsea and hit out at a press conference about “the amount of criticism and negativity” his players had had to endure during the season.

When Baker asked him to be specific, Pearson launched into one of the most embarrassingly nasty tirades in memory.

“Have you been on holiday for six months? Have you?” he asked, with a glare. “I think you must have had your head in the clouds, been away on holiday, or reporting on a different team because, if you don’t know the answer to that question, then I think your question is absolutely unbelievable… “I think you are on ostrich. Your head must be in the sand. Is your head in the sand? Are you flexible enough to get your head in the sand? My suspicion would be ‘no’.”

To be fair to Pearson, who had sparked earlier controversies by telling a fan to “f*** off and die” during a defeat to Liverpool, and calling another journalist a “prick”, he did guide Leicester to a remarkable escape from the threat of relegation before being replaced by Claudio Ranieri.

It was a case of chalk and cheese – Leicester Blue – and Ranieri’s appointment was widely ridiculed as a disaster waiting to happen.

But he will now go down in history as the man who masterminded a sporting fairytale which Hollywood scriptwriters would fear was ridiculously far-fetched.

More importantly, he has done it with grace, good manners and common decency every inch of the way.

He has refused to lambast referees, instead pointing out what a difficult job they have. He has been impeccably polite with journalists to the point of treating them all to pizzas. He has shown complete respect for his opponents.

Oh, and on the point of the ultimate victory, he flew back to Italy to take his 90-year-old mother out to lunch.

There are, of course, exceptions in every profession but football managers too often allow the power they hold to translate into arrogance. Jose Mourinho and even Sir Alex Ferguson are among those who have been guilty of that offence.

But the biggest lesson in the Leicester City story is that you can be a winner and be nice. You get the best out of people by treating them properly and getting them on your side.

And that’s what makes Claudio Ranieri such a refreshing role model to people in all walks of life.

THE “farewell tour” on the speaking circuit took me full circle last week.

My first ever speaking engagement, in March 1996, was to the Eastbourne Methodist Homemakers in Darlington. They remember it most for the fact that I let slip that my wife was pregnant with our fourth, then asked them not to tell anyone because I hadn’t even told my own mum.

Twenty years on, it was a pleasure to meet them all again last week, this time in their new venue of Haughton Methodist Church.

The homemakers have been going since 1952 and I was pointed to the longest-serving member, who joined in 1954. “What’s your name?” I asked, notebook at the ready. “Yes, that’s right,” replied the lady, who turned out to be Dorothy Watt.

Jean Breeze, another long-standing member, remembered how, as a mere 14-year-old, she started work at Dressers printers, in the building which is now a pub named after The Northern Echo’s editor in 1871, William Stead.

“I was looking out of an upstairs window onto Crown Street the day General Montgomery went past in a parade of soldiers,” Jean recalled. “Who’d have believed it?”

THE next night, I went off to Stockton to speak to the members of Grangefield Ladies Club, who meet in the Gray’s Road Institute.

It was a pleasure, despite the fact that several of them had turned up in the belief that I was from Peter Barratt’s garden centre.

“There’s a lady in the front row got a question about begonias,” I was told.

FINALLY, the most frightening email of the week came from the marketing department of Ramside Hall Hotel, near Durham.

It was headlined: “Christmas is coming.”

Give me strength.