Sporting Miscellanies

Once again Bernie Ecclestone shines that halogen lamp of a mind and illuminates a dark corner of contention. With the Football League poised to disqualify his friend and fellow owner, Flavio
Bernie offers his finest defence of a baddie since informing us that Hitler was a guy who got things done. "What has that got to do with football?" he asks of Crashgate. "He suffered a harsh punishment in Formula One but it is not as though he could even do the same things in football." What an intellect this is. With insouciant ease, Little Bern identifies the impossibility of Briatore organising a high-speed crash involving a Renault car and a foam wall in the midst of a Championship game at Loftus Road. In which case, of course, the rule excluding those banned from other sports from being football club directors must be waived. The man's a legal and philosophical powerhouse.

Is Froch too confident for his own good?

Concern grows that Carl "the Cobra" Froch lacks the self-regard required for an extended career at the pinnacle of the big-fight game. As he prepares to defend his WBCsuper-middleweight title on Saturday, the boxer expresses regret that he wasn't around 20 years earlier to teach Tommy Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler a lesson. He'd have taken all three, he says. And although he doesn't mention Roberto Duran, no doubt he would have done the same to him. Fingers crossed that when the first bell rings this weekend, the Cobra doesn't find himself hypnotised by self-doubt.

Ashes-for-all decision is a real vote winner

Better late than never, the Government decides that the public should be allowed to watch cricket on television after all. A senior government source briefs a newspaper that future Ashes Tests will be screened on free-to-air TV . . . a relief to the game, as well as its followers, given that Sky's audience for the recent Ashes series peaked at a nugatory two million. We wish to make it crystal clear that this is in no way retaliation by the Government for the Sun's decision to transfer its support from Labour to the Tories. Thankfully our politics, much like our media and sport, are a little more high minded than that.

A case of more rhyme than reason in snooker

Hats off to Neil Robertson for winning snooker's Grand Prix last night. "That's why he's called the Thunder from Down Under'," commentated Dennis Taylor after the Aussie made a decent pot in his final against Ding Junhui. I hate to be pedantic but no, Dennis, it's not. Robertson is called that because "thunder" rhymes with "down under". . . just as Mark Selby, despite never having done or said anything vaguely amusing, is "the Jester from Leicester".

There's nothing wrong with Hallmark card-standard rhyming in sporting nicknames — far from it, it's a constant delight — but let us never confuse a facile rhyme with trenchant analysis.