Wellock's World
Can Woodgate survive London?
WHAT with the Oscars,
and Spurs winning
the Carling Cup, it
seems to have been quite a
week for celebration. For
everyone except Gazza, that
is.
How he would have loved to
have been out on the town
after a Wembley triumph, just
as Jonathan Woodgate was
after following the Gascoigne
route to the bright lights - a
move which many feel proved
to be Gazza's undoing when
he could have opted for the
discipline of Sir Alex
Ferguson or Bob Paisley.
What will it do for
Woodgate? He's made the
perfect start and doubtless
he's floating on an even
higher cloud than the one he
was accustomed to on a
Saturday night out in
Middlesbrough, where his
hometown club must have
had a far better reason for
letting him go than the
emergence of David Wheater.
There has been little sign of
Woodgate mellowing since
those days when Leeds was
the place to be. He was not in
the forefront of the pictures
showing Spurs players a little
the worse for wear ordering
kebabs in the early hours of
Monday. But that probably
merely confirmed that he has
learnt the art of not getting
caught.
Shortly after Woodgate
joined Tottenham, Gary
Lineker observed: "You can
take the boy out of
Middlesbrough" and while the
unfinished sentence has
unkind implications for
Teesside it will be a huge
surprise if the player
suddenly discovers a love of
the theatre.
As for Gazza, when we
speak of the fine line
between genius and
madness we are
normally thinking of
poets or Einstein or Spike
Milligan. But why not
sportsmen? Current research
into the correlation between
creativity and insanity has
thrown up the question of
whether genetic tampering
should be used to treat mental
disorders if at the same time
it dulls the genius.
It's a pity such troubled
waters are further muddied
where professional football is
concerned by the lifestyle
driving players off the rails.
WHETHER Juande Ramos
can build on his good start
with Spurs depends largely
on his ability to control the
bag of talented rascals at his
disposal. But my vote for
manager of the season would
go to David Moyes, who has
added to the impressive list
of Scots who have proved
adept at the job.
For much of the season it
seemed that if any club could
break into the big four it
would be Sven's men, but
then Everton's 2-0 win at
Manchester City on Monday
took them above Liverpool
into fourth place.
This will merely fan the
flames at Anfield, where
absence from the elite cannot
be tolerated. But it is even
more essential to the rest of
the country that the big four
do not continue to grow
richer at the others' expense,
which is why Eduardo
suffered his horrendous
injury.
Another Scottish manager,
Alex McLeish - he who
turned his back on the
national team to manage
Birmingham - was honest
enough to admit he had told
his players the only way they
could hope to compete with
Arsenal was by getting their
tackles in.
Martin Taylor took that a
little too literally with
dreadful consequences, but
it's surprising it doesn't
happen more often when
clubs threatened with
relegation come up against
the fat cats.
AS one who finds the
hullabaloo surrounding the
Oscars totally baffling, I can
smile wryly at such selfcongratulation
as the Daily
Mail's trumpeting of the fact
that it has been nominated six
times in the Sports
Journalism Awards.
One of the
nominations is
apparently for its
coverage of Steve
McClaren's sacking,
when alongside a
picture of the nicelycoiffured
manager
sheltering under an
umbrella while his
England team succumbed
to Croatia they ran a
headline saying: "Wally
with a brolly."
Whether you consider
that unkind or superbly apt
hardly matters, but I
understand it was a subeditor's
wife who telephoned
in to suggest it. I wonder if
they'll give her the prize.
I'M not aware of any
performance-enhancing
drugs for divers, so in that
respect Tom Daley should
be competing on a level
swimming pool when he
becomes the youngest
Briton to appear in the
Olympics.
But even in the
anticipated absence of
Dwain Chambers the Beijing
Games seem certain to be
ruined by other cheats, as
well as protests about human
rights abuses. Whether it will
be a suitable environment for
a 14-year-old boy is open to
question, but at least Tom's
presence will remind us of
the purity which is supposed
to be the essence of sport.
IT WAS good to see that
Banks Developments had
provided a £10,000 grant for
Durham Amateur Rowing
Club to buy a new boat.
But this is the same
company which is
seeking permission to
build on Mount
Oswald golf course.
Can this sort of
sporting
discrimination
be considered
politically
correct?
8:56am Friday 29th February 2008
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