AS the once noble art of boxing is plunged into ever greater disrepute, it will take more than a feeble left jab from John Prescott to revive its credibility.

I'm all for zero tolerance ahead of political correctness, but the situation clearly called for the sort of swinging right hook someone ought to land on the shameless Don King.

Perhaps for his next trick King will sign Prescott and issue all spectators at his first bout with a dozen eggs.

Fighting the deputy Prime Minister might be Lennox Lewis's best chance of getting back in the ring as the full cost of his careless surrender of his world titles has been brought home by King throwing his millions at Hasim Rahman.

Far from granting Lewis the rematch he expected, Rahman is now lined up to fight a Dane, Brian Nielsen, followed by Mike Tyson.

Lewis is taking legal action, but with Tyson already suing King for $100m the whole business is a farce.

It will not be helped by tomorrow's professional debut of Audley Harrison. While more deserving Olympic gold medallists have faded from view, any amount of hype has surrounded Harrison without anyone in the know being convinced that he can punch any harder than Prescott.

He should, however, be too strong for Mike Middleton, a 33-year-old Gulf War veteran and private eye from Florida who has lost five times inside two rounds to total unknowns.

Middleton is said to be happy to receive £3,500 to become Harrison's first victim, while King has offered Rahman £18m to cover signing-on and the fight with Tyson.

A COUPLE of snippets caught my eye in a national newspaper this week. The first read "at the end of the day it is all about the players."

This came not from a soccer manager but from former England cricket coach David Lloyd, otherwise known as Bumble and as the man who said: "We flipping murdered them" after a draw with Zimbabwe.

He was pilloried for that, but it's a far bigger crime for such a bright and entertaining man to lapse into football-speak.

Secondly came this from former Durham cricketer Simon Hughes on the subject of the county's current leading light, Paul Collingwood: "He announced himself five years ago by taking a wicket with his first ball in first-class cricket then lashing the Northants attack for 91 before drinking the Wantage Road bar (and several others in the next few weeks) out of Stella Artois."

I can't imagine why Collingwood travelled all the way to Northants' ground at Wantage Road to celebrate as the match in question was at Chester-le-Street.

STELLA Artois, I understand, is some kind of lager. Another brand - probably the best in the world, they claim - twice enjoyed wonderful publicity this week as it was emblazoned across the chests of the Liverpool players.

In my book, lager is for women, wimps and limp-wristed Guardian readers, and I wonder how Tommy Smith would have reacted to advertising it in the days when men were men and Liverpool's only foreigners were tough Scots in the Shankly mould like Souness, Dalglish and Hansen. Well, perhaps not Hansen.

Still, wherever they come from, Liverpool players know they will never walk alone, and if Michael Owen chose to walk to hell and back he'd probably have the entire Kop for company.

TIME was, of course, when we would have frowned on a German walking off with an FA Cup winner's medal.

But for Dietmar Hamann it must have helped to ease the memory of his previous attempt with Newcastle.

Barely able to walk because of a dead leg, he had a half-time altercation with Ruud Gullit, who apparently questioned his commitment. Gullit always seemed an extraordinary appointment to manage Newcastle and it has been no easy task for Bobby Robson to pick up the pieces.

It was sad to see such a dignified character as Robson losing his cool this week, largely it seemed because a contributor to a newspaper's letters column had suggested he should get rid of Shearer, Lee, Speed and Barton.

Thankfully, we still have free speech, and even the crankiest of fans are entitled to their say. It would be a dull old world if we all curled up in front of the telly with cans of lager and were too comatose to comment on the rubbish on view.

Robson deserves the utmost admiration. His problem is that, at 68, his passion for the game remains undimmed and he desperately craves the success which, in the current Newcastle set-up, might be beyond him.

He deserves one more season to prove that he has been foiled by dreadful luck with injuries. After that someone will have to take responsibility for weaning him off the football drug.

A sudden removal would be cruel - a gradual lessening of involvement will be required, accompanied by some stimulating company on the golf course.

Published: 18/05/01