Wellock's World

You may remember that when Richard Caborn first assumed high office he was asked who the England cricket coach was and replied: "The Aussie."

Further questioning revealed he knew next to nothing about sport and the fiasco surrounding Picketts Lock suggests he knows little about politics either.

It has seemed inevitable for months that the North London site earmarked for the 2005 World Athletics Championships would not get beyond the £3m consultancy stage.

If there were to be a world championship in chucking millions of pounds at feasibility studies we would strike gold every time. But when it comes to getting on with the job, forget it.

Mr Caborn, however, thought he had the perfect solution to this latest impasse - take the World Championships to his home city of Sheffield, where they could be accommodated at the Don Valley Stadium.

In his mind it was all Don and dusted. Unfortunately for him, the IAAF president Lamine Diack didn't need a feasibility study before issuing an instant and damning verdict.

Yes, the man from the mighty nation of Senegal had all the ammunition he needed to let it be known that as far as the big wigs of international sport are concerned we are no longer capable of organising a booze-up in a brewery.

England won the bid to stage the 2005 World Championships on the basis that they would be in London. Not Sheffield, or Gateshead or Chipping Sodbury.

The initial plan was that the event would be staged at the rebuilt Wembley, and it is the fiasco surrounding our so-called national stadium which is at the root of this shambles.

After our poor showing at this year's World Championships, this is another huge blow to athletics just when we hoped that the government might find positive ways to build on our Olympic success.

IN THE midst of this sporting wasteland, it's a miracle that England have qualified for the World Cup finals.

No doubt we owe much to Sven, but we owe even more to the player whose name Mr Caborn is probably struggling to recall.

Posh calls him Goldenballs and while she might know something we don't, whichever way you look at it she's spot on.

From the villain of the last World Cup, David Beckham has been transformed into a national hero and some of us are being labelled hypocrites for daring to have a go at him in the past.

Well, it doesn't seem to have done him any harm. Perhaps it was all part of the motivation he needed to realise his enormous potential.

Now all he has to do is persuade his teammates that he can't do it all.

It's tempting to celebrate the anniversary of this column by trotting out the old phrase "what a difference a year makes" as I launched with a lament for Kevin Keegan.

After the defeat by Germany on that last fateful day at Wembley, the route to Japan and Korea was not exactly overflowing with Eastern promise.

I listened to the start of that defeat on the radio in Northern Ireland while returning from sampling the delights of golf in Donegal.

Whisper it quietly, but the delights are such that we went back for more last week, only to find ourselves stranded at Larne by a gale on our return.

That's how it came to pass that ten regulars at a country pub near Darlington quietly witnessed Beckham's goal in a rather less salubrious pub in Larne.

There was no triumphalism because most of the locals seemed to be supporting Greece.

TRIUMPHALISM seems to be what Zimbabwe's Alistair Campbell was accusing Nasser Hussain of when the England captain dashed off the field, bat aloft, after striking the winning runs in the third one-day international.

Nasser remembered to shake hands as an afterthought, but Campbell declined and I side with the Zimbabwean on this one.

We may have been trounced by Australia, but that's no excuse for Nasser to behave as though he's just won the World Cup when all he's done is beat a side who don't know where their next win is coming from.

He should also remember that several of them are from farming stock and have more important things on their minds.

Not that I would want to take anything away from the achievements of Durham's Paul Collingwood, who has seized his chance superbly. And I dare say he will have remained humble enough to be gracious to his hosts.

THERE was no triumphalism in the clubhouse at windswept Ballyliffin, where one of the clergymen who preceded us on the course announced: "I started badly and then fell away."

We all knew the feeling, but with crack like that we'll be back for more