The loveliest of men

Stokoe started his career with Newcastle on £3 a week and was eternally grateful for every morsel he extracted from the game he loved. Ferguson earns £4m a year from Manchester United, yet still wants half the stud fees from a champion racehorse in which he had the great good fortune to be given a share. This strikes me as greed on an obnoxious scale, especially as Ferguson is prepared to create huge waves in his pursuit of what could apparently amount to £100m.

Nine years ago I had the great good fortune to play nine holes of golf with Stokoe near his Bury home, and in the piece I wrote at the time I quoted him as saying: "When we get back to the North-East I'm looking forward to playing with old friends. If I am rewarded for looking after myself I will be very grateful."

At that time he suffered from arthritis, occasional migraines and tinnitus - ringing in the ears, which he suspected resulted from heading heavy leather footballs. He could probably have sought compensation, but it wasn't in the nature of the loveliest of men, whose dream of spending long years in happy retirement on Hexham golf course was tragically cut short by dementia.

If, as Jimmy Montgomery says, he no longer recognised his Sunderland players from 1973, his passing is a relief. Rest in peace, Bob.

TWO quotes have caught my eye this week. One was from Barnard Castle lad Rory Underwood, of whom little is heard these days, although I understand he is to open a new golf course in the area shortly. He apparently coaches part-time at Leicester Rugby Club, and on hearing of Dean Richards' sacking said: "The game is becoming more like football all the time."

Considering that a host of commentators were at pains to point out the cultural chasm between the sports after the Rugby World Cup win, this is a fairly contentious remark, although not without substance considering that in six years Richards had guided the Tigers to seven trophies, including four Premiership titles and two Heineken Cup wins.

The quote which is probably worthy of greater inspection came from Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, who said: "In real sport they take cheating seriously, in entertainment sport they don't give a s***"

By entertainment sport he means American Football and baseball, and he added: "People don't seem to care that someone who weighs 300lb in the NFL didn't get that way by eating porridge." Apparently in the Super Bowl the other day 13 players weighed in at 300lb or over (that's over 21st 6lb).

Quite what Mr Pound makes of sumo wrestling is not recorded, and as long as these "sports" restrict themselves to providing entertainment for a national, rather than international, audience we need not be too concerned.

Some people, including an editor in these parts, were predicting in the 1980s that there would be an explosion of interest in Super Bowl in this country. Thankfully, they have been proved wrong. Where The Northern Echo at the time gave it half a page, nowadays we give it one paragraph, which is roughly what American newspapers gave to the Hutton Report and the fall-out from that worldwide institution, the BBC.

Apparently the American Football League has a European public relations director, which is rather disturbing. But if he thinks he can spread the gospel by welcoming Dwain Chambers, who wants to take up the sport, he is surely mistaken.

Chambers is about to be banned from athletics for two years after the steroid THG turned up in his chamber pot, but he need have no fears of similar action in America, where four Oakland Raiders tested positive for the same substance last summer and were let off.

At his best Chambers might have won a sprint medal at this year's Olympics. But he has shown so little aptitude for producing his best when it matters that we need not mourn his departure to the murky waters across the pond.

HOW odd that, in the era of shaven heads, three men with ponytails have recently won big sporting events. Wimbledon champion Roger Federer took the Australian Open, while successive European Tour golf events have been won by a German named Marcel Siem and Spain's Miguel Angel Jimenez.

At 22 and 23, Federer and Siem may be considered young men making a fashion statement. But 40-year-old Jimenez initially grew his hair to cover some skin lesions. When cancer was ruled out, he perhaps decided that, Samson-like, he would draw strength from his locks.

It certainly served him well as he overhauled Thomas Bjorn in the closing holes of the Johnnie Walker Classic. If he keeps it up, he will hopefully frighten the neatly-coiffured Americans in the Ryder Cup.

IF I were offered a seat at the Super Bowl I would be asleep faster than the man so ludicrously convicted of drunkenness this week after nodding off at a Middlesbrough match.

Published: 06/02/2004