What the average director knows about football

The sacking of Mick McCarthy - or at least the timing of it - was as gormless as that of Alan Durban 22 years ago, and there have been a few muppets inbetween who should never have been appointed in the first place.

Brian Clough never actually said why he had hadn't managed at a level above Hartlepool in his native North-East, but it was pretty clear that he wouldn't work with the sort of people who have tended to run the region's leading clubs.

Many of them have been living proof that you don't need breeding or brains to make the sort of money which paves the ego trip on to a football club's board.

Has anything changed since former Sunderland hero Len Shackleton famously left a blank page under the chapter heading: "What the average director knows about football"?

Whenever the position of Newcastle or Sunderland manager comes up for grabs everyone says they can't afford to get it wrong again. At least this time they have until the summer to sort it out, and nothing is likely to happen until the FA have made their choice.

If England look beyond Martin O'Neill, or he turns them down, will Newcastle still want him if Glenn Roeder has guided them into Europe and decided he fancies the job full-time? O'Neill was a Sunderland fan as a boy, and who's to say he wouldn't relish the challenge of resurrecting the club? Where Durban, another of Clough's proteges, threatened to succeed, O'Neill might be just the man to give the Wearside fans the team they deserve.

It's obviously a long shot, but frankly none of the other supposed candidates fill me with hope and placing Ian Porterfield high among them is nothing more than wistful nostalgia.

PAUL Collingwood, who will be 30 in May, is the oldest member of England's current Test team and given their excellent performance in the first Test in India it bodes well for the future.

It also says a lot for the County Championship that after a couple of years' nurturing in that much-maligned competition players like Liam Plunkett, Alastair Cook and Monty Panesar can make the step up into the Test arena.

Panesar, in fact, has come through despite not being given as much opportunity as he should have been at Northampton. First he was kept out by two off-spinners who flirted with England, Graeme Swann and Jason Brown, then by a South African coach who seems to prefer his own overseas recruits. If Kepler Wessels doesn't make maximum use of Panesar this summer he should be told to pack his bags forthwith.

Monty has been held back by a reputation for being unable to bat or field, but he showed in helping Collingwood to his maiden Test hundred that he's no mug with the blade. That will be a big consolation to Duncan Fletcher, who would not be keen on a last four reading: Hoggard, Harmison, Simon Jones, Panesar.

Injuries will play their part, of course, but it would be good to think Fletcher might in future be able to rotate Jones with Plunkett and Panesar with Ashley Giles to ensure he always has a decent No 8. After all, without the tail's contribution in the first Test England would surely have lost.

IT IS no great surprise that Will Greenwood is to retire after spending this season helping Harlequins to escape division one. At 33, he might have had another couple of years at the top, but being out of the Premiership seems to have left him adrift from the England squad and he is one of many for whom the World Cup was a big watershed.

After the try-less defeat by Scotland, it is worth recalling that Greenwood scored 31 tries in 55 games for England. He wasn't blessed with great pace or huge strength, but he had flair, vision, and an instinct for attacking space and being in the right place at the right time - all qualities which are currently lacking among the majority of clones who have come through the Premiership clubs' academies.

I DOUBT whether Paula Radcliffe will shed many tears over missing the Commonwealth Games, about which it is becoming as difficult to get excited as the Winter Olympics. She has her £140,000 purse for next month's London Marathon to justify, but the fact that she's still running at all suggests she hasn't given up on her Olympic dream. In that context, a Commonwealth medal would be of little significance.

JUDGE Jane Stickels reinforced her reputation as Calamity Jane by calling the wrong result at Lingfield racecourse on Monday, obliging many bookies to pay out on the original "winner", 9-4 favourite Welsh Dragon, then the 14-1 chance who was shown by the photo to have been first past the post.

As this horse was named Miss Dagger and this is Stickels' fifth high-profile blunder, it prompts the thought she'll be mysteriously bumped off, Cleudo-style - Calamity Jane with the dagger in the weighing room.

Published: 10/03/2006