THERE is no suggestion, from The Northern Echo at least, that Sergeant Nigel Miller has done anything wrong.

The insinuation by other newspapers may well be different, but when Mr Miller ran the line at Elland Road on Saturday, he had a certificate from his doctor saying he was suffering from stress and he had agreement from Durham Police's occupational health physician.

So why, if he has done nothing wrong, did we tell the story in the first place?

There are many reasons. The nature of modern top flight football, with millions of eyes trained on it and millions of pounds spent on it, is that anyone who participates in it forsakes a part of their privacy. Mr Miller was no anonymous by-stander: he was part of the team of officials who contentiously decided that the elbow thrown by England captain David Beckham at another player was just an accident. Just like every other participant from goalkeeper to referee to manager, he is bound to come under scrutiny.

More important, though, is the nature of Mr Miller's illness.

Stress is the affliction of the early 21st Century. Half-a-million people are suffering from it in this country.

Mr Miller would seem to be a classic case. He was moved from a nine-to-five job at Urlay Nook to shift work at Bishop Auckland. This limited his opportunities to officiate at matches and he faced the delicate task of balancing his work with his homelife, of cramming as much as possible into a day that is only 24 hours long.

This juggle between work, kids, hobbies and home is performed every day by many millions of people. It is particularly prevalent, as Mr Miller will testify, among public servants who are often over-stretched by staff shortages in very demanding jobs for which they are not paid enough.

But stress is also a very contentious illness. Sufferers can be regarded as malingerers and told to pull themselves together by people who have no understanding of the illness.

By their reticence, Mr Miller and the authorities themselves - who must have known that in the over-exposed world of football the story about the stressed-out copper officiating at the season's most stressful game would leak out - have only added to the impression that stress is somehow less valid than other illnesses.

Had Mr Miller been a cancer sufferer, for example, the newspapers would have been encouraged to tell of his brave recovery and his heroic pursuit of his sporting dream.

If we are to tackle the first epidemic of the 21st Century, this illness has to be explained; if we are to tackle its prevalence, its causes have to be examined. Its stories, then, have to be told.