THERE have been quite enough illustrations this week of how the gap between success and failure can be infinitesimal without people adding to sport's cruelties by cheating.

The classic case is Ballinger Ridge being pipped on the line after leading by ten lengths at Lingfield.

There's enough agony in such a defeat for those who had backed Kieren Fallon's mount without discovering that he may have had ulterior motives in allowing it to happen.

I'm not convinced he did cheat because to engineer such a tiny margin of defeat the Irish ex-alcoholic would have to be a man of remarkable judgement

But, along with the other suspended jockey, the mysteriously unseated Sean Fox, Fallon has certainly done enough to put racing back in the dock.

PERHAPS the sport of kings is now a permanent resident of the dock, just as football seems to be.

But for all the unpleasantness surrounding Sir Alex Ferguson it was impossible not to feel a tinge of sympathy for him on Tuesday.

Again that fine line was all too evident as Paul Scholes was denied a second goal by a linesman wrongly flagging for offside, then United went out of the Champions League with 30 seconds left. We can't accuse the linesman of cheating, merely incompetence, but there was cheating in the match.

Sadly, Porto's Carlos Alberto will be at liberty to continue his disgraceful diving in the quarter-finals. He hit the deck faster than Sean Fox and should be banned from the rest of the competition.

THEN there were the fine lines in the Six Nations Championship. England were denied two tries by video replays, France scored a try from a forward pass and Wales had one ruled out because a decoy runner took out two defenders.

Other than in the French case, they were all correct decisions, but on another day they could have gone the other way and the results would have been reversed.

Not that England deserved to win. There was plenty of evidence of their malfunctioning line-out even in the World Cup final, and with the outstanding Paul O'Connell in their second row Ireland were able to prey remorselessly on this weakness.

In their quest for the perfect game, England are in danger of neglecting the fundamentals, so don't be surprised if they ditch their intellectual superiority and revert to one of sport's great cliches by "going back to basics."

THE fine lines are also cruelly emphasised by injuries, of course.

Manchester United were already rocking in the absence of Rio Ferdinand without the equally disruptive loss of Roy Keane, while the England rugby team suffered from the absence of Danny Grewcock.

He did a magnificent job of filling Martin Johnson's shoes against Scotland, but when Grewcock went missing as well the cracks began to show.

Now we must hope that Sunderland don't suffer unduly from the absence of Julio Arca after he has shown his true worth following the cold shoulder treatment by Peter Reid and Howard Wilkinson. Sunderland need to get back in the Premiership far more than they need to reach the FA Cup final, although the prospect of three North-East teams in Europe next season is an alluring one.

FROM a neutral's point of view, even more interesting than Sunderland heading for Cardiff then Europe would be for Brian Little's Tranmere to head down that unlikely route.

The Merseyside midgets are currently 11 places below Hartlepool in Division Two and the prospect of them playing Arsenal at the Millennium Stadium will bring predictions of a farcical mismatch.

But it might also bring out reminders of Arsenal v Swindon in the 1969 League Cup final. Swindon, then in the Third Division, won 3-1 and it's gratifying to prick the current pomposity of Arsenal fans by reminding them of such things.

They also lost the 1988 final to Luton. It surely couldn't happen to the current team, however. In their present form they look irresistible, but such are those fine lines that it might take only an injury to Thierry Henry or an erroneous flag from an incompetent linesman to derail them.

That's the beauty of sport, and it would be all the more beautiful were it not besmirched by cheats and buffoons with no idea of how to behave.

THIS brings me finally to the Leicester City trio. The fact that they have spent a week banged up in a Spanish jail will hopefully give a nasty jolt to all those Premiership posers who think they are above the law.

But what really beats me is what on earth were Leicester doing at La Manga in the first place? Have there not been more than enough instances of English footballers misbehaving at the Spanish resort?

And it doesn't seem two minutes since Gary Lineker was leading a consortium to save the club from bankruptcy, so how come they can now splash out £40,000 on a jolly for players who are heading for relegation?

Published: 12/03/2004