WHAT'S up wi' t'Tykes? They say pride comes before a fall, and these are dark days in Yorkshire when traditional pride and obstinacy are giving way to what amounts to a plea for help from outsiders.

The worst confirmed example is the ex-Chelsea alliance of Ken Bates and Dennis Wise at Leeds United, who are one of four Yorkshire teams in the bottom five of the Coca Cola Championship. Rotherham are next to the bottom of League One and Scarborough, having had ten points deducted for going into administration, are currently on zero points at the foot of Nationwide North.

As for the cricket team, yesterday's shock news that they want Chris Adams as captain will at least be better received by their fans than having Younis Khan in charge. The Pakistani claimed three weeks ago that they wanted him as skipper, which seemed unlikely and may have contributed to unsettling Anthony McGrath.

He didn't get a real crack at the captaincy when appointed in 2003 because he became a one-day international and was then given four Tests before being jettisoned. He has since been a much more consistent run scorer and ought to be better qualified now as a leader than he was three years ago.

To appoint a Pakistani as Yorkshire captain would have smacked of a desperate attempt to appeal to the Asian community at a time when 30 years of neglect in that area has finally been overcome by last season's appearance of Adil Rashid and Ajmal Shahzad in the first team.

It's ironic that while Leeds is now a thriving city, the football club is in freefall - they are just below Barnsley - and after climbing to the Premiership and winning the national cup the rugby club is also on the slide again.

Bringing in Wise is an enormous gamble and unless he miraculously turns things round it will stick in the craw of every Leeds fan that their ex-chairman Peter Ridsdale is now in charge at Cardiff, where everything is rosy.

GEOFFREY Boycott caused quite a stir this week, which is doubtless what he intended, by saying it was time for Duncan Fletcher to go. I have no wish to disagree with Boycott, who does at least have the merit of being entertaining in offering his outspoken views, even if they are not always based on the truth.

While he was quite right to say it's ridiculous for Paul Collingwood to be batting below Michael Yardy in the England one-day team, he was wrong to assert that Yardy is predominantly a left-arm spinner.

In the last two seasons he has bowled only 81 overs in the County Championship for Sussex, taking six wickets, while averaging just short of 50 with the bat.

As was evident from the efforts of the Sky commentary when the fourth Test at the Oval was abandoned, the trouble with having ex-players making judgements is that they tend to do so from a knowledge only of the actual playing of a game, not from the facts surrounding it.

Boycott could perhaps have been excused for thinking that Yardy was mainly a left-arm spinner as he bowled ten overs for 18 runs in the defeat by Australia, while Steve Harmison went for ten an over.

This adds weight to my argument that England might as well pack their one-day side with spinners because even ordinary twirlers like Yardy and Jamie Dalrymple are proving much harder to get away than the currently hapless Harmison.

FREDDY Shepherd wasn't the only chairman to hear fans calling for him to quit at the weekend. There were cries of "Allen out" at Sheffield Wednesday, another of those beleaguered Yorkshire clubs, following the sacking of manager Paul Sturrock only a month after he signed a new four-year contract.

Chairman Dave Allen sounds like a comedian but probably isn't, while Shepherd's tending of the Newcastle flock has certainly been no laughing matter. It's a mark of the fans' loyalty and patience that there have not been more frequent calls for the chairman to go.

After his lamentable treatment of Sir Bobby Robson and the misguided appointment of Graeme Souness, his only hope of salvation was to lure Martin O'Neill to St James' Park. His failure has brought predictable results, and there's no reason for fans to tolerate this from a man who has shown his contempt for them in the past.

A MAJOR reason for wanting to stage the Olympics, we were told, was that it would encourage participation in sport, improving the health of an increasingly obese population. Now we are being told the opposite could happen.

The chairman of the Central Council for Physical Recreation this week told MPs there is no evidence that Olympics increase participation, and added that because Sport England would be funding the aquatics centre and velodrome for the 2012 Games at a cost of £340m other sports would lose two years of lottery funding.

After the Wembley fiasco we had better fasten our seatbelts. We are in for another bumpy ride.