BARELY will the England cricketers have left one North-East Riverside next month than the footballers will descend on the other.

It's a remarkable coincidence that England teams are making historic appearances in the region at two venues of the same name. But it's a sad contrast between the sports that while every effort is being made to pack in the fans at the cricket ground at Chester-le-Street, the Middlesbrough football hierarchy didn't know until yesterday whether they would be allowed any fans at all. It is terrific for the region to have England teams gracing the banks of the Wear and the Tees, acknowledging the passion for sport in the North-East. But how horribly ironic it would have been had the over-enthusiasm of the fans who invaded the pitch at the Stadium of Light contributed to a Riverside lock-out.

They were not all Sunderland fans, of course, who caused trouble at the England v Turkey match, and given the history of Anglo-Turkish tensions it's a fair bet there would have been problems wherever the match was staged. UEFA dished out a slap on the wrist yesterday when they might have ordered that the match against Slovakia on June 11 should be played behind closed doors, kicking Teesside in the teeth and costing the FA around £2m.

Meanwhile, the ECB have lost around £2m as a result of the shortfall in cricket's World Cup, partly because of England's failure to play in Zimbabwe.

We heard enough about the Mugabe regime at the time, but nothing has changed and there will be demonstrations when Zimbabwe visit Chester-le-Street for the Test starting on June 5.

Former Sports Minister Kate Hoey has pledged to join the protests, which could include pitch invasions by people wearing whites covered in fake blood.

The authorities are aware of the threat and hopefully the stewarding will be more effective than it was at the Stadium of Light. But the historic occasion will inevitably be tarnished as cricket is again used as a political tool by people with a genuine grievance.

IT'S been quite a week for the sporting hotbed of Ashington, previously famous only for footballers and working men's clubs. Stephen Harmison, recently named Wansbeck Citizen of the Year, was awarded an England cricket contract and golfer Kenneth Ferrie won the Spanish Open.

The North-East's talent production line has never extended to golf and it was a surprise to find the drought ended by a relative unknown.

Ferrie, 6ft 4in and 18st, is a 24-year-old former British boys champion who had struggled since joining the paid ranks but won £201,000 in Tenerife last Sunday. Although the two he beat in a play-off, Peter Hedblom and Peter Lawrie, are hardly household names, there were several Ryder Cup stars in the field.

Ferrie, who started at Bedlington and moved on to Alnmouth, is the first North-Easterner to win a European Tour event since Seaton Carew's David Whelan equally surprisingly won the Barcelona Open 15 years ago. You'd have to go back a similar length of time to find the region's previous winner, Doug McLelland of South Shields.

Harmison's contract, meanwhile, is an interesting one as it tends to suggest that he and Lancashire's Jimmy Anderson are now ahead of Darren Gough in the England pecking order.

But Gough scored 72 yesterday to haul Yorkshire out of trouble, suggesting there's still plenty of fight in him, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the England selectors find they can't ignore him well before the summer's out.

REAL Madrid's denial of any interest in David Beckham can be seen either as a smokescreen or just another example of the outright deception which is now commonplace in professional sport. If the media are perceived as getting too close to the truth, it becomes the task of public relations people supposedly there to help them to start issuing denials.

Perhaps it started with the vote of confidence becoming a kiss of death for managers. A certain economy with the truth may be acceptable; total deception is not.

Real Madrid denied any interest in Ronaldo and signed him a few days later, so we can confidently expect the same with Beckham.

FOLLOWING my recent comments about Phil Tufnell, I almost choked on my Sugar Puffs to discover that he is the favourite to win I'm A Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here.

For the benefit of one of those appallingly superficial TV programmes, the man known as The Cat has been let loose in a jungle with other so-called celebrities, of whom former Wimbledon footballer John Fashanu is just about the most famous. The only other "celebrity" I've heard of is Wayne Sleep, a dancer who once featured in a cricket report, having been confused with Peter Sleep, an Australian who bowled spin almost as well as The Cat.

I find the whole business deeply sleep-inducing, and as cats love sleep I don't expect to hear of Tuffers prowling stealthily through the jungle in pursuit of the prize.