On The Sidelines

Would-be Dublin residents Wimbledon have won admirers over the years for a blood-and-guts approach to the game, but some of their players, it seems, have developed an unfortunate habit of bringing their work home with them.

Take Ceri Hughes, the Welsh international, who showed a typical never-say-die attitude towards losing a bet at pool. Hughes was in his father's pub back home in Tonypandy when he got into an argument with a regular over a game of pool. When his father John told him to calm down, he reacted like any true member of the Crazy Gang. . . he punched dad in the face.

"It was just one punch," said John afterwards, "but I was on the floor with my teeth hanging out and blood all over the place. I still can't believe my own son hit me like that."

Hughes senior lost two teeth immediately, but later had to have a further 10 removed in hospital.

Maybe if the Dons do come to Dublin, they could do Ireland a favour and leave Ceri at home.

English fans occasionally manage some fairly cutting chants at games, with Everton supporters' song to the effect that "he lives in a small box, in a very small box, Bill Shankly" etc, or Arsenal fans' old greeting for John Fashanu - "score with your brother, you couldn't score with your brother" - appalling people of good taste everywhere.

Still, even these pale beside what Ajax manager Morten Olsen has had to put up with recently.

At the start of the season, Olsen was travelling to Holland, by boat, from his native Denmark when his wife fell overboard and drowned. Her body was never recovered and Olsen was briefly questioned about her disappearance by Dutch police.

If that was harrowing, however, it was nothing to what Feyenoord fans subjected him to when the two teams met, with the opposition's fans repeatedly chanting "Morten, where's you wife? Morten, Morten, where's your wife?" for the duration of the game.

It puts having your head depicted as a vegetable by a tabloid into perspective . . .

One man who never hung around long enough to get that sort of treatment from the English press is Terry Venables, whose Australian football team play the first leg of their World Cup qualifying play-off in Tehran tomorrow.

The Australian FA have already failed in their attempt to have national airline Qantas pick the team up immediately after the game and now they have been dealt a somewhat more serious blow by FIFA.

The world body have decreed that since Iran have had to play far more qualifiers than Australia to get to this point, they should be shown some leniency with regard to the number of yellow cards they have picked up along the way. They have, therefore, declared an amnesty for the four Iranian players who picked up their second cautions of the campaign during last weekend's match with Japan.

"Are we all following the rules here or not?" fumed Venables (himself a renowned stickler for rules) during the week. "If you get to the World Cup finals there is an amnesty, but not now - we are all still in the same qualification process."

Given that all four Iranians are key players, including their goalkeeper and captain Reza Abedzadeh, this is far more controversial than a mere throw-in award going the wrong way.

Isn't it great the way your travel arrangements to a sporting event can sometimes add to the excitement of the big day.

Take last Saturday, for example. At Twickenham, they had to delay the kick-off in the match between England and Australia because some idiot on a train to the ground pulled the emergency brake so many times that many supporters simply became fed up, climbed off the train and walked the rest of the journey along the track, prompting the entire line to be shut down.

Our football fans, of course, don't need idiots with emergency breaks to play havoc with their nerves, they have Ryanair to do that for them.

The "no frills" airline had a planeload of supporters on their edge of the seats last Saturday long before Ray Houghton rekindled our hopes of qualification for next summer's World Cup finals in France.

The airline's mid-afternoon flight from Brussels to Dublin was a couple of hours late departing from Dublin and fans who had expected to land 50 kilometres the wrong side of the city, with three and a half hours to spare, began to realise that the timing was going to be somewhat tighter than that.

"Never mind," said a kindly Ryanair rep in Dublin, "we'll have a bus bring you all the way to the game." However, at the other end of the journey the promise was reneged on and the bus stopped precisely where it always does - at the first metro station it comes to, which happens to be the furthest station from the King Baudouin stadium.

Still, everybody made it to the ground . . . with a whole five minutes to spare.

Next week an update on those fans who have decided to start new lives in Belgium, having failed to make it back home with Ryanair . . .

Those hard-up folk in the English Premiership hit the jackpot yet again this week when they dumped CSI, the company which has been selling the overseas television rights to their games for many years, and replaced them with a consortium made up of Mark McCormack's TWI and French station Canal Plus.

The new deal is worth more than £100 million over three years, or about £1.5 million per season to each club. It is not entirely clear yet how the money will be split up yet, but the phrase `the rich get richer' springs to mind.

And finally . . . just space in this post-World Cup exit football special to let you know that a book about cricket has won the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year.

A Lot Of Hard Yakka - Triumph And Torment: A County Cricketer's Life by Simon Hughes beat off some hefty competition to lift the prestigious prize, whose previous winners include Paul Kimmage's A Rough Ride, Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch and Donald McRae's Dark Trade (an excellent book about boxing which is available in hardback at Eason's and many other bookshops in Dublin at present for a fiver). Racers, a book about the world of Formula One, by Richard Williams was named as runner-up.

Both should soon reappear in the monthly bestsellers' list at Sportspages. At the moment, the second volume of Garry Nelson's footballing diaries is the only nominated book still in the chart. which reads as follows . . .

1. European Football - A Fan's Handbook - The Rough Guide by Peterjon Cresswell and Simon Evans (Rough Guides, £14.99).

2. The Official FA Non League Club Directory 1998 edited by Tony Williams (Tony Williams Publications, £16.95).

3. The Complete Handbook Of Pro Basketball 1998 edited by Zander Hollander (Signet, £6.95).

4. The NHL Official Guide & Record Book 1997/98 (NHL, £16.95).

5. Left Foot In The Grave - A View From The Foot Of The Football League by Garry Nelson (Collins Willow, £14.99).

6. Diary Of A Season by Lawrence Dallaglio (Virgin, £16.99).

7. Sir Les - The Autobiography of Les Ferdinand (Headline, £16.99).

8. The British Boxing Board Of Control Yearbook 1998 edited by Barry Hugman (Lennard Queen Anne Press, £16.99).

9. Official Rugby Union Club Directory 1997/98 edited by Stephen McCormack (Tony Williams Publications, £14.99).

10. The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw - The Robin Friday Story by Paul McGuigan and Paolo Hewitt (Mainstream, £9.99).

List supplied by Sportspages bookshops, 94-96 Charing Cross Road, London and St Ann's Square, Manchester.

Ph: 0044-171-240-9604.

Please send any correspondence to On The Sidelines, Sports Dept, The Irish Times, 11-15 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2 or e-mail emalone@irish-times.ie