WHEN silly money is involved there is always a high risk that it will all end in tears. And with the £315 million pledged by ITV Digital to cover Nationwide League matches we are talking very silly money indeed.

Now that the digital dunces have realised their monumental folly and reneged on the deal, there is talk of clubs going to the wall en masse, and Darlington chairman George Reynolds emerges looking like a wise old owl.

When George set about cutting players' wages last season in order to balance the books, he needed the support of other lower division clubs, otherwise players would continue to go where most money was on offer.

Now those chairmen who have been paying out beyond the clubs' means are the ones bleating loudest, realising perhaps too late the need to dance to George's tune.

Wanting as much as we can get for doing as little as possible is a national malaise, and footballers have done more than most to set the trend.

Perhaps those in the lower divisions deserve some sympathy because of the obscene sums earned by players in the Premiership, but in terms of supply and demand they have been found wanting.

The football mania which has grown since the Premiership was launched does not extend beyond the top flight, as ITV Digital have found to their cost.

Poor viewing figures and low advertising revenue have forced them to pull the plug, but shame on them for not doing their market research properly in the first place.

You don't have to be a football connoisseur to work out the gap between the Premiership and the rest when Wolves have been propelled to the brink of the top flight largely on the back of performances by Premiership rejects Steve Sturridge and Alex Rae.

Rae's former Sunderland teammate Daniel Dichio, hardly a resounding success at the Stadium of Light, could also return to the Premiership with West Brom, who have managed to win five games on the trot despite serving up some very ordinary fare for ITV Digital last Friday night. They would have been switching off in droves had droves been watching in the first place.

No doubt there will be a lot of lining of lawyers' pockets before this issue is resolved, but by then some clubs will already be in receivership.

Darlington will not be among them, pledges Reynolds. But his big fear now must be that semi-professional football will come to the lower divisions and crowds will dwindle to fewer than 1,000, no matter what the standard of the new stadium.

ONE wouldn't wish to be disrespectful, but there have been more shocking deaths recently than that of a 101-year-old lady.

Imagine the difficulty for the England cricketers in carrying on the series in New Zealand following the tragic loss of Ben Hollioake at 24. Then as they were battling to save the final Test came news of another cricketer cut down in his prime, Umer Rashid.

A former England Under 19 player, Rashid didn't possess Hollioake's talent, but he had scored two first-class hundreds, including 106 for Sussex against Durham at Chester-le-Street last summer. He went on to clinch victory in that match by taking four for nine with his left-arm spin.

England were obliged to carry on playing when their hearts would not have been in it, while many sportsmen will be required to take a break next Tuesday as a mark of respect for the Queen Mother. Almost without exception they will belong to a generation who cannot comprehend the logic of such ancient protocol.

one sport in which the Queen Mother is genuinely mourned is racing, and the chances of a minute's silence being scrupulously observed at Aintree are infinitely better than they were at football grounds following the death of Princess Margaret.

But grief was suspended on Tuesday to celebrate Tony McCoy's astonishing feat in beating Sir Gordon Richards' 55-year-old record of 269 winners in a season.

While Sir Gordon didn't have the benefit of light aircraft to fly him from one meeting to another, he was a 7st midget who rode on the Flat.

McCoy has to spend a large chunk of his life sweating in hot baths and saunas to keep his riding weight down to around 10st, and as a National Hunt man he has also come a cropper 40 times this season.

It would have been far better, of course, had he ridden his 270th winner at Aintree tomorrow on Blowing Wind, which was my tip for last year's Grand National, when McCoy remounted to finish third.

He's a teetotaller, so presumably whatever liquid he has consumed in celebration this week will be easily sweated off before the ultimate professional goes for his first Grand National win. I wouldn't bet against him

IT took a three-man RFU panel, including a QC, two months to come up with their non-commital flannel after investigating Newcastle Falcons' allegations of racial abuse at Gloucester. It would have taken me about ten minutes to predict exactly what their findings would be.