THE Yorkshire press were rubbing their hands when their boys were thrashing Durham in the Benson & Hedges Cup the day after Durham had beaten Lancashire.

"This means Lancashire must be very poor," they observed, only to be given half a day off when Yorkshire were beaten by 2.15 by their Roses rivals on Monday.

Yorkshire looked a good side at the Riverside, as indeed they should given the talent at their disposal. But their capitulation at home to Surrey in the championship and against Lancashire will have dampened members' spirits after the euphoria of their first county championship title for 33 years.

David Byas may not have been as shrewd a captain as Brian Close or Ray Illingworth, but as an experienced, dyed-in-the-wool Tyke he knew how to pull together the disparate threads which are always threatening to pull Yorkshire cricket apart.

He also knew last season that a brash Aussie was waiting to step into his shoes, and if it all goes wrong this season there will be a members' backlash against the Australian takeover of a club which, until the foolish signing of a temperamental left-arm spinner named Richard Stemp, was for Yorkshiremen only.

An exclusive club for proud and stubborn men will always be ready to erupt, but it takes a strong insider to keep a lid on it. When there's trouble at t'mill an Aussie, no matter how talented, cannot be expected to sort it out.

TROUBLE at Millwall is never far away, either. And these days you can add Cardiff to that, which is why both sets of play-off-related football hooliganism were so predictable.

Yet despite the horrendous scenes at Millwall only three people have been charged, and on the same day as this emerged The Northern Echo revealed that the tattooed, beer-bellied, shaven-headed epitome of thuggery named Lee Owens is free to travel to the World Cup.

This is extraordinary considering his antics at Euro 2000 and we can only console ourselves with the knowledge that unless he has cleaned up his act the Japanese will have some pretty nasty tricks waiting for him.

Apparently police in Tokyo have been testing pole-mounted wire nooses for tripping up hooligans bigger than themselves. And if they wish to perform delicate surgery once they have caught them they will have my full support.

FERGIE, a pretty nasty F-word in itself, has dragged football further into the gutter with his tirade involving nine uses of a more earthy F-word in two minutes at a press conference on Monday.

"What were all those asterisks in the newspaper?" asked Arsene Wenger mischeviously the following day, instantly elevating himself on to a different plane than the foul-mouthed Scot.

Fergie was all smiles when his horse won the 2,000 Guineas on Saturday, but having invited the press to Old Trafford on Monday it took only one provocative question about his £28m misfit Juan Sebastian Veron to send him ballistic.

Some say he has lost the plot; others that it was all part of building the siege mentality which would prevent Arsenal from completing the double on Wednesday night. It certainly helped to create more interest in that match than the FA Cup final.

WITH A TV audience of 7.5m, the snooker climax attracted a million more viewers than the Cup final.

This was well below the 18.5 million who tuned in for Denis Taylor's last-ball triumph against Steve Davis in 1985, but that was the heyday of snooker when world finals always seemed to finish 18-17.

There were also characters like Alex Higgins and the lager-guzzling Bill Werbeniuk contributing to the impression that Davis was dull.

Nowadays snooker needs Ronnie O'Sullivan to come out with a ridiculous attack on Stephen Hendry to generate publicity, but having Peter Ebdon as its new champion won't do any harm.

Once a pony-tailed showman, Ebdon is now a health-conscious father of four who swims every day, practises yoga, studies the psychology of sport and generally does everything necessary to reach the pinnacle of his profession. Whatever happened to champions emerging from a misspent youth in smoke-filled snooker halls?

I HOPE Hartlepool United FC are not going to allow H'Angus to die. The man inside the monkey outfit may now have been demoted to sober-suited mayor, but H'Angus should live on, despite his origins not being appreciated by one ill-informed radio presenter who referred to him as Aitch Angus. Personally, I think the mayor should do both jobs, going to matches with chain, mace bearer and as many bananas as they can carry.

THE Sri Lanka cricketers arrived at Chester-le-Street this week without a scorer, so Durham's second team chalker David Graham did the job, prompting the Durham players to christen him David Grahamatunga.

But the public address man was not aware of the situation and started asking him for the Sri Lankans' christian names until first team scorer Brian Hunt pointed out: "He's from Consett, not Colombo.