http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/...n_page_id=1951
The dream ticket sat side by side, exchanging private jokes and flashing their teeth at a small cluster of cameras.
The younger man, a chap named Simon Jordan, was clearly in charge. He was brash and bottle-blond, with an improbable tan and the patter of a time-share salesman.
He told us why he had chosen the middle-aged man next to him to be manager of his football team. It was something to do with Neil Warnock being a 'winner'.
'He's been on my radar for a long time,' said Jordan, and he made him sound like a UFO.
The 'winner', who steered Sheffield United to relegation last season, beamed at the compliments. Warnock's 20-year managerial career has been relatively unsuccessful, his teams largely unwatchable and his disciplinary record consistently lamentable.
'When you are good at your job there is always going to be a bit of jealousy,' he says. And you ask yourself: 'How would he know?'
Yet Warnock is not plagued by self-doubt.
'People either like me or loathe me,' he declares, as if opinions were evenly divided. And his lack of self-awareness is matched by that of his spectacularly charmless chairman. A touch of humility might be in order for one who has appointed no fewer than eight managers and three caretaker managers during his term at Crystal Palace. But humility and Jordan remain strangers.
He knows, you see. He understands what makes the good ones good and the great ones great. And when it comes to Warnock, he simply gushes: 'He gets his players going . . . he leads . . . I see it as a dream ticket, because you've got two guys who are very straightforward.' I'm not making it up. That's what he said.
Now, given the glories of this sporting week, why should this column waste even a centimetre of space upon a laddish poseur like Jordan and the clown he has chosen to manage his minor football club in a mundane explain.
Football in this country has reached an interesting stage. It has never been richer, never been more widely exposed, never felt so secure.
And yet, I suggest, it has never been so little loved.
Over the past week, English sport has been revelling in the success of its rugby team. The public at large may be unsure of the laws and unable to name more than half the side but it senses that something honest and wonderfully full-hearted has been happening in France. How many times in these past seven days have you heard the phrase: 'Not like those bloody footballers'?
The public believes that professional footballers spend too much of their time diving, acting, bickering and bawling abuse at impotent referees. The public senses that professional football is controlled by mendacious agents, avaricious managers and unprincipled chairmen.
The public has the distinct feeling that, just like their managers, footballers are ludicrously overpaid, systematically under-achieving and perversely pleased with their own inadequacies. And the public, I have to say, has got it just about right.
Of course, there isn't a chance that football is about to be usurped as the nation's favourite, since its roots are too deep and its attractions too obvious.
Certainly, it will not be swept aside by a swell of support for the handling code. And yet, something interesting is happening. A week ago, an hour or so after England's quarter- final victory over Australia in Marseille, I climbed aboard a bus outside the Stade Velodrome, en route to my hotel. It was a long, low bus, containing several goldshirted Aussies. At the first stop, some two dozen English fans came swarming through the doors and struck up an dubious ditty about Matilda. The Aussies chuckled.
At the next stop, a batch of French followers entered, chanting the Marseillaise. They were heard in respectful silence, opposition erupting only at the final note. One more stop and the doors opened to admit two dozen Welshmen.
They had hoped that their team might make a quarter-final but they turned up anyway, dressed in scarlet tunics and white helmets; the images of heroism at Rorke's Drift. The lofty impression was only partially affected by their choice of song — a ribald version of Coming Round the Mountain.
There was much banter and not a scrap of hostility as the municipal bus rolled down the hill to the old town, the gusts of laughter billowing through the Mediterranean evening. Daftly delightful people revelling in their own foolishness.
I remember thinking that this was how sport could be, how it ought to be, stripped of cynicism, chauvinism and moronic aggression. Football doesn't understand those emotions.
Instead, it elevates small men like Simon Jordan and Neil Warnock to positions of passing influence. It indulges them and takes them seriously. It listens to phrases like 'the dream ticket' and doesn't burst into bellows of derision.
In its arrogance, its smugness, its unthinking complacency, football just doesn't get it. It is a great pity.
Don't bet on the Brits
For all I know, the minor levels of tournament tennis are as bent as a corkscrew. After all.
any activity which involves mug punters and predatory bookmakers must always be open to question.
Instinctively, I sided with Andy Murray when he said of matchfixing that: 'Everyone knows that it's going on.'
And I sniggered when his agent issued a splendidly bogus 'clarification' which had Murray explaining: 'When I said: “Everyone knows that it's going on” I meant that everyone has probably heard that three or four players have spoken out about being offered money to lose matches — which they refused.' But of course.
Anyway, and not withstanding this persuasive recantation, I think we can stick with Murray's initial assessment that certain tennis players are open to offers. However,we may be absolutely sure that not one of the players being offered money to lose tennis matches is British. Why? Oh, come on. Think about it.
Much less of Moore, please
After the compliments, a word of caution. Rugby may be enjoying some dazzling headlines at the moment, but a few of its primitives are still trying to turn back the clock.
These are the ex-internationals who tell us that the game's gone soft since they retired, that nobody drinks aftershave lotion at official banquets any more and that all foreign teams are exclusively composed of cowards and cheats. Especially if they happen to be French.
Once upon a time such views used to do little damage, since they were usually delivered at the annual dinner of the Old Tosspottians RFC,and nobody could remember a word the morning after. But occasionally, these witless opinions find a wider audience.
Brian Moore,the former England hooker who is carving himself a niche as a professional 'character', has just been waxing nostalgic about a brutal encounter between France and England back in 1991.
'I say it plainly,' wrote this plainspoken man. 'We were not innocent but we didn't hit back. Hit first — not last. Serge Blanco's claim that we deliberately set out to kick him is untrue. It was an incidental benefit of finding him at the bottom of a ruck, under their posts, early in the game.'
There was a good deal more of this smirking, rib-nudging deeplydepressing posturing, but I shall spare you. Suffice to say that as rugby strives to gain a foothold in a sporting nation dominated by football — a game which Moore, with truly Wildean audacity, describes as 'Oikball' — it cannot afford such buffoonery.
For times have changed.Even the Old Tosspottians are staggering towards the 21st century. It is high time that rugby's dinosaurs did the same.
The dream ticket sat side by side, exchanging private jokes and flashing their teeth at a small cluster of cameras.
The younger man, a chap named Simon Jordan, was clearly in charge. He was brash and bottle-blond, with an improbable tan and the patter of a time-share salesman.
He told us why he had chosen the middle-aged man next to him to be manager of his football team. It was something to do with Neil Warnock being a 'winner'.
'He's been on my radar for a long time,' said Jordan, and he made him sound like a UFO.
The 'winner', who steered Sheffield United to relegation last season, beamed at the compliments. Warnock's 20-year managerial career has been relatively unsuccessful, his teams largely unwatchable and his disciplinary record consistently lamentable.
'When you are good at your job there is always going to be a bit of jealousy,' he says. And you ask yourself: 'How would he know?'
Yet Warnock is not plagued by self-doubt.
'People either like me or loathe me,' he declares, as if opinions were evenly divided. And his lack of self-awareness is matched by that of his spectacularly charmless chairman. A touch of humility might be in order for one who has appointed no fewer than eight managers and three caretaker managers during his term at Crystal Palace. But humility and Jordan remain strangers.
He knows, you see. He understands what makes the good ones good and the great ones great. And when it comes to Warnock, he simply gushes: 'He gets his players going . . . he leads . . . I see it as a dream ticket, because you've got two guys who are very straightforward.' I'm not making it up. That's what he said.
Now, given the glories of this sporting week, why should this column waste even a centimetre of space upon a laddish poseur like Jordan and the clown he has chosen to manage his minor football club in a mundane explain.
Football in this country has reached an interesting stage. It has never been richer, never been more widely exposed, never felt so secure.
And yet, I suggest, it has never been so little loved.
Over the past week, English sport has been revelling in the success of its rugby team. The public at large may be unsure of the laws and unable to name more than half the side but it senses that something honest and wonderfully full-hearted has been happening in France. How many times in these past seven days have you heard the phrase: 'Not like those bloody footballers'?
The public believes that professional footballers spend too much of their time diving, acting, bickering and bawling abuse at impotent referees. The public senses that professional football is controlled by mendacious agents, avaricious managers and unprincipled chairmen.
The public has the distinct feeling that, just like their managers, footballers are ludicrously overpaid, systematically under-achieving and perversely pleased with their own inadequacies. And the public, I have to say, has got it just about right.
Of course, there isn't a chance that football is about to be usurped as the nation's favourite, since its roots are too deep and its attractions too obvious.
Certainly, it will not be swept aside by a swell of support for the handling code. And yet, something interesting is happening. A week ago, an hour or so after England's quarter- final victory over Australia in Marseille, I climbed aboard a bus outside the Stade Velodrome, en route to my hotel. It was a long, low bus, containing several goldshirted Aussies. At the first stop, some two dozen English fans came swarming through the doors and struck up an dubious ditty about Matilda. The Aussies chuckled.
At the next stop, a batch of French followers entered, chanting the Marseillaise. They were heard in respectful silence, opposition erupting only at the final note. One more stop and the doors opened to admit two dozen Welshmen.
They had hoped that their team might make a quarter-final but they turned up anyway, dressed in scarlet tunics and white helmets; the images of heroism at Rorke's Drift. The lofty impression was only partially affected by their choice of song — a ribald version of Coming Round the Mountain.
There was much banter and not a scrap of hostility as the municipal bus rolled down the hill to the old town, the gusts of laughter billowing through the Mediterranean evening. Daftly delightful people revelling in their own foolishness.
I remember thinking that this was how sport could be, how it ought to be, stripped of cynicism, chauvinism and moronic aggression. Football doesn't understand those emotions.
Instead, it elevates small men like Simon Jordan and Neil Warnock to positions of passing influence. It indulges them and takes them seriously. It listens to phrases like 'the dream ticket' and doesn't burst into bellows of derision.
In its arrogance, its smugness, its unthinking complacency, football just doesn't get it. It is a great pity.
Don't bet on the Brits
For all I know, the minor levels of tournament tennis are as bent as a corkscrew. After all.
any activity which involves mug punters and predatory bookmakers must always be open to question.
Instinctively, I sided with Andy Murray when he said of matchfixing that: 'Everyone knows that it's going on.'
And I sniggered when his agent issued a splendidly bogus 'clarification' which had Murray explaining: 'When I said: “Everyone knows that it's going on” I meant that everyone has probably heard that three or four players have spoken out about being offered money to lose matches — which they refused.' But of course.
Anyway, and not withstanding this persuasive recantation, I think we can stick with Murray's initial assessment that certain tennis players are open to offers. However,we may be absolutely sure that not one of the players being offered money to lose tennis matches is British. Why? Oh, come on. Think about it.
Much less of Moore, please
After the compliments, a word of caution. Rugby may be enjoying some dazzling headlines at the moment, but a few of its primitives are still trying to turn back the clock.
These are the ex-internationals who tell us that the game's gone soft since they retired, that nobody drinks aftershave lotion at official banquets any more and that all foreign teams are exclusively composed of cowards and cheats. Especially if they happen to be French.
Once upon a time such views used to do little damage, since they were usually delivered at the annual dinner of the Old Tosspottians RFC,and nobody could remember a word the morning after. But occasionally, these witless opinions find a wider audience.
Brian Moore,the former England hooker who is carving himself a niche as a professional 'character', has just been waxing nostalgic about a brutal encounter between France and England back in 1991.
'I say it plainly,' wrote this plainspoken man. 'We were not innocent but we didn't hit back. Hit first — not last. Serge Blanco's claim that we deliberately set out to kick him is untrue. It was an incidental benefit of finding him at the bottom of a ruck, under their posts, early in the game.'
There was a good deal more of this smirking, rib-nudging deeplydepressing posturing, but I shall spare you. Suffice to say that as rugby strives to gain a foothold in a sporting nation dominated by football — a game which Moore, with truly Wildean audacity, describes as 'Oikball' — it cannot afford such buffoonery.
For times have changed.Even the Old Tosspottians are staggering towards the 21st century. It is high time that rugby's dinosaurs did the same.
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