Managers who are some way short of pensionable age

For one thing he'd be reunited with Carl Cort, the striker he must secretly have been delighted to get rid of after spending three years vehemently knocking back criticism of the invalid's presence on the Newcastle staff. This was one good reason to suspect that Sir Bobby should be drawing his pension before it could be further devalued.

He is 71, he has had a wonderful career and he is still far more interesting to listen to than most other people in the game. But any vision of resurrecting a once-great club should be resisted. The best he could achieve at Wolves would be to steady the ship. There was talk of a £300,000 a year contract, but he can't take it up while Newcastle are still paying up his contract in monthly instalments.

Meanwhile, Peter Taylor is to sign a new £160,000 a year deal to stay with upwardly-mobile Hull.

Where is the sense in this? Taylor was also once considered good enough to manage England, albeit in a brief caretaker role, then he slightly blotted his copybook and suddenly clubs in the top two divisions were no longer prepared to take a punt on one of the brighter young managerial talents. He dropped into the bottom division, but is now heading for a second promotion while the same old names are linked with vacancies at a higher level.

Have they not noticed that the clubs challenging the wealthy elite in the Premiership - Middlesbrough, Everton and Bolton - have managers who are some way short of pensionable age?

SURELY Sunderland must go up this season. They have recently beaten Ipswich and the only other teams they have to worry about are Wigan and Reading, who drew 1-1 last Saturday. As Wimbledon have been and gone, of the old non-league clubs who have scaled the higher echelons, Wigan are now the highest-placed.

They have a hard-working young manager in Paul Jewell, but perhaps more importantly they have the multi-millions of JJB Sports owner Dave Whelan behind them, while Reading have John Madejski, who made his fortune by launching Auto Trader.

The question is, if either of these clubs reach the unlikely heights of the Premiership, will their benefactors consider it wise to splash out the necessary millions on players to keep them there? The same can be asked of Sunderland's Bob Murray, who runs a tight ship.

The answer, sadly, is that a certain Russian oil tycoon has raised the bar to an outrageous height, which was one of the more sensible things pointed out by Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd this week.

Speaking at a junket in Dubai, he claimed the elite had "no sympathy" for clubs below the Premiership and that the Premier League would take over the running of the game.

"It's dog-eat-dog," he said, thereby reminding us of how he and Douglas Hall referred to Tyneside women a few years ago.

If he's so fond of the canine creatures, I'm sure there are plenty of Newcastle fans who would be happy to see Shepherd go off and run a greyhound track.

WHILE the Scots confirmed that their massacre of the Japanese rugby minnows was mere bullying by performing with supreme ineptitude against South Africa, it transpires that they are not hopeless at everything.

Stephen Maguire's 10-1 win against David Gray in the UK Snooker Championship final at York lifted him to second favourite behind Ronnie O'Sullivan to win the Embassy world title. As he has already beaten the Rocket twice this season, at 23 Maguire clearly has it in him to inspire a whole generation of young Scots to desert what will shortly be smoke-free pubs and hone their skills in the snooker halls instead.

HAVING played cricket against and golf with Harry Smurthwaite, it came as a great shock to hear he had expired on the 11th green at the tender age of 68.

It had been only a couple of years since he stopped playing cricket for Bishop Auckland, and when I last saw him he intimated he might have carried on had the declining standards of behaviour at all levels not so sorely tested his cheerful disposition.

It would be little consolation to know that he departed in the same week as Bill Alley, who also played on long after most have hung up their whites, especially as the tough-as-teak Aussie lived to be 86.

But Harry would have recognised a better era in one of the tales about Alley, who joined Somerset at the age of 38 and played for them for 12 years before becoming a first-class umpire. He once drove and hooked Fred Trueman's first two balls for four, whereupon two rapid bouncers followed and Alley set off up the pitch. The crowd fell silent as Trueman strode to meet him, eye-balled him and said: "T'first pint's on me tonight, Bill."

Published: 03/12/2004