Supporters are football’s only constant

Management, supporters, journalists, we all bought in to this idea that Sunderland had found a footballer who was an antidote to the usual exponent of the modern-day game.

He wasn’t at Sunderland for the money, as mindboggling as it might have been.

He had travelled to the North-East as a lost soul, only to buy into a mindset and culture that resonated somewhere deep within him.

He understood what football meant to the region, identified with the Sunderland supporters who had stood by their team through thick and thin, and was the antithesis of the London playboy travelling north to fleece an unsuspecting club of their cash.

Or at least that’s what we thought, and what he repeatedly took great pleasure in telling us.

Looking back now, of course, it was all an elaborate facade, a smokescreen to hide the same self-satisfying motives that make most supporters’ stomachs turn.

Bent wasn’t at Sunderland because of the club’s standing, its history or its place in the local community. He was there because somebody was paying him to do a job; no less, no more.

So when Aston Villa came calling and offered him more money to do the same job at Villa Park, he couldn’t get out of the North-East quick enough.

‘So what’, you might think. If a rival newspaper offered to almost double my salary, would I still be writing for The Northern Echo next week? In order to replace Bent, Sunderland will no doubt offer another player more money than he is earning in an attempt to entice him away from his current employers. And for all that Steve Bruce attempted to take the moral high ground on Tuesday, he has already left six clubs for a variety of reasons during his own managerial career.

Ultimately, football is a business, and barring one group of people, everybody involved in it is in it for themselves.

Players, managers, coaches. If this week’s events have proved anything – and let’s be honest, most of us had probably worked this out for ourselves anyway – it’s that loyalty has no place in a sport that is anything but a game.

The exception to the rule, of course, is the supporters, the one constituency who continue to display unwavering faith and devotion.

It is the oldest truism in football, but it rings with more resonance than ever in the wake of this week’s upheaval. The supporters are the only constant at a football club, and they will always be the most important people involved in it.

In a year or two’s time, the Bent saga will be forgotten, but Sunderland Football Club will still be here and it’s fanbase will still be providing the heartbeat that enables it to breathe.

A reassuring thought after a week that has tested the resolve of even the most hardened football follower.

ONLY in Britain could serious consideration be given to a plan that involves spending £547m of public money on the construction of an Olympic Stadium, in the teeth of the worst recession for two decades, only for said stadium to be knocked down within a month of the Paralympic Games concluding.

It sounds utterly nonsensical, yet it is exactly what will happen if Tottenham Hotspur are selected as the preferred bidder when the Olympic Park Legacy Committee meet to discuss the future of London’s Olympic Stadium later this month.

Tottenham’s plan is to demolish the existing stadium in order to clear space for a purpose-built 60,000-capacity football stadium.

At the same time, they would also fund the upgrade of the Crystal Palace athletics stadium in a ham-fisted attempt to live up to the promises that were made when London was awarded the Games.

Make no mistake about it, though, this was not what was promised. As IOC member Craig Reedie explained this week, the London bid team explicitly promised a reduced main stadium in the wake of the Olympics, with an athletics track within it.

That is exactly what West Ham, the alternative bidders, are committed to, and while you can quibble about the desirability of hosting football matches with a running track around the pitch, that is West Ham’s problem and nobody else’s.

How can we as a nation possibly expect to host future sporting events if we cannot live up to our promises relating to the one we’ve got?

How can we accuse FIFA of dishonesty relating to the 2018 World Cup bid when we are about to break the trust of the IOC?

And how can the London Olympics possibly have a lasting legacy if its centrepiece is ripped apart before the dust has even settled on the Games?

Like Bent, Tottenham officials have eyed an opportunity to make a bit of cash. I, for one, will be disgusted if they are allowed to succeed.

PAUL Nicholls has spent the last week looking for excuses for Kauto Star’s below-par run in the King George, and he appears to have found one with Wednesday’s news of a lowgrade infection.

Perhaps the two-time Gold Cup winner was feeling under the weather.

But in the eyes of many, Saturday’s race merely hastened a trend that had begun to develop last season.

Kauto Star looked like a horse on the wane, a great former champion battling gamely, yet ultimately unsuccessfully, to keep up with his younger rivals.

With that in mind, part of me is hoping he doesn’t make it to Cheltenham in March. We’d all love to see him reclaim his crown, but what we don’t want to see is him toiling his way through a Gold Cup, only for exhaustion to catch up with him before the end.

If Kauto Star is to be involved in the Gold Cup, he has to have a chance of winning it.

But on the evidence of Saturday’s run, I’m not sure that’s the case.