IT really is time to bring back National Service. Not just to get the hoodies off the streets, but to toughen up our budding sportsmen.

That bloke who now plays in LA is the least of our worries as Rooney, Lampard and Gerrard top the footballing crocks. Flintoff, Harmison and Gough are among the bowlers missing at a crucial time for their counties, some of whom are utterly depleted. I've seen better attacks at Eryholme than the one put out by Derbyshire against Durham on Tuesday.

Then to cap it all Jonny Wilkinson has crumpled in a heap again just when we thought he was going to make it through to tomorrow's World Cup opener against the USA after his longest injury-free run since his winning drop goal four years ago.

Jonny's damaged ankle ligaments can be added to arm, shoulder, groin and three knee injuries, plus a lacerated kidney, hernia and appendicitis.

A similar list might be drawn up for Kieron Dyer and no doubt Newcastle fans will now see his sale to West Ham as a piece of good business. Although he appears to have been unfortunate in picking up his latest ailment, it would not be difficult to blame his lifestyle for some of the others, which cannot be said of Jonny.

To say he is jinxed has become a cliché. He is driven by the World Cup, and if he can't play a significant part in taking England at least to the semi-finals then he may as well retire, as his body is obviously telling him to do.

For the moment, we live in hope that he will miss only the first game, which ought to be a stroll even without him. But when he does return he'll be a marked man, just like the Irish captain and talisman Brian O'Driscoll.

Ireland have enough talent to make a big impression, but they are never the same without O'Driscoll, who has just about recovered from having his sinus fractured by a punch in a warm-up game against Bayonne.

The French obviously wanted him out of the way as Ireland are in their group, but the Bayonne brute didn't do as good a job as the All Black pair who so cynically ended O'Driscoll's Lions captaincy when the first Test had barely begun.

The smart money is on a New Zealand v France final. It should make American football look like a game of tiddlywinks.

IRISH eyes will also be on the Walker Cup this weekend when it is held at arguably the finest course in the British Isles, Royal County Down, with 18-year-old Rory McIlroy in the GB and Ireland team. After his performance in this year's Open, McIlroy has been tipped for great things, and a Walker Cup on home soil is not a bad stage on which to parade his talent.

In the one-point defeat at Chicago two years ago, Barnard Castle's Robert Dinwiddie chipped in to square his singles match at the final hole, capping a year in which he won the Scottish and Welsh Strokeplay titles and the Tillman Trophy. He followed up with the Brabazon Trophy last year before turning pro with his reputation as a winner firmly secured. Two recent European Challenge Tour victories have confirmed that, and his excellent performance in the main Tour event at Gleneagles suggests he can join Graeme Storm and Ken Ferrie in giving the North-East the strongest professional golfing contingent it has ever had.

ONE man's injury, of course, is another man's opportunity. So when Ravi Bopara was ruled out just when he seemed to have cemented a regular place in England's one-day cricket team, Dimitri Mascarenhas stepped in and hit five successive sixes.

He also took two for 55 in ten overs, which is better than I would have expected from a dibbly-dobbly bowler better suited to slow seamers than the Oval track which produced the 633-run thriller.

At 3-3 the series is perfectly set up for a superb decider at Lord's tomorrow, and if he plays Mascarenhas will hope to do a little better than on his last visit there, when he was mauled by Durham in the Friends Provident Trophy final.

This is going to be quite a weekend, but it won't match up to that one.