Where the sun doesn't shine anymore

"I'VE heard more applause greet a cholera epidemic," was how Sid Waddell summed up the audience reaction when their hero Eric Bristow lost a set to Gary Mawson in the World Darts Championships last Week

Geoff Boycott and George Hook showed a similar level of enthusiasm for Zimbabwe and Italy's victories over the English cricket and Irish rugby teams in the past few days.

"We're rock bottom and you can't go any lower than that," declared Boycott in Saturday's Grandstand. England's disastrous trip to Zimbabwe, which ended with a 131-run defeat in the final one-day international between the two countries, had left Geoff in a state of apoplexy.

Grandstand's Steve Rider attempted to get Geoff to cheer up a little, to look on the bright side, but the Yorkshireman was having none of it. There was no bright side. "Wisden doesn't lie you know, it gives the facts and you only have to look at the facts of the England team over last few years, he said.

"We don't win abroad. We travel badly - we're like wine, we're hopeless when we're shaken about going on aircraft abroad. We never win, we never do anything. When we play at home we're lucky if we come away with a drawn series - those are brutal facts, they're not what I enjoy saying. They're not all bad players but, by crikey, for some time they've been underachieving," he said.

When Steve heard the word `underachieving' his eyes lit up. "Well if the ability is there, it seems to suggest that the role of Ian Botham, England's motivational and seam-bowling coach, is the most important at the moment," he suggested. "Well, it hasn't worked at all, has it? And if you saw some of the bowling - that hasn't worked either," answered Geoff. (Mentioning the name Botham to Geoff Boycott is akin to waving a very large red flag in front of a very angry bull - they're not the best of pals).

But Steve persisted in looking, hopefully, to the future and wondered if there was somebody out there who could save English cricket.

What other names then are there waiting in the wings that could help England?" he asked. "None ... and don't talk to me about Graeme Hick," said Geoff of the man who was dropped from the England team before the Zimbabwe tour. "When England were 30-4 at one stage against Zimbabwe, they were saying `well, if Hick were here it'd be 30-5'. He'd a bad season last year." So forget Hick then.

George Hook was in an equally depressed mood on Saturday's Sports Stadium when he spoke to Michael Lyster about Ireland's defeat to Italy.

"This is a catastrophe. This is worse than Dunkirk because they got their soldiers off the beaches in Dunkirk very few of this team are going to get off the beaches ... at this moment in time we are a bankrupt rugby nation."

In his preview of the match, George had refused to even contemplate defeat, so awful was the prospect. "Ireland have just come back from the Algarve from warm weather training, the Italians have just had their buns frozen off in Wales for the last two weeks and have been unable to train. If we were to lose to them today, in the words of Lord Denning, `it would open up an appalling vista'. It's inconceivable and we can't consider it as a possibility," he said

After the match, RTE's Ryle Nugent had the difficult task of asking Pat Whelan, the Irish manager, to comment on the appalling vista created by the Italians' victory. "Surely this is not the best Irish rugby has to offer?" asked Ryle "Jaysus, I hope not," replied Whelan's face, but his spoken response was more diplomatic.

GAA president Jack Boothman chucked diplomacy out the window when he claimed recently that the All-Ireland final replay between Meath and Mayo was "ruined by two minutes of thuggery and savagery". Boothman defended his comments, made in response to a question from a pupil at a school he visited, on RTE's Football 96 ... and all that last week.

Meath manager Sean Boylan was, however, a bit fed up with what he felt was an over-reaction to incidents during some of last year's matches, particularly the one involving Martin O'Connell in the Meath-Tyrone semi-final when he was accused of stamping on a player.

"It was like an OJ Simpson thing - local radio, Highland radio, Midwest radio, RTE, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it took all the pleasure out of winning the semi-final," said Boylan, who was equally critical of the media reaction to the flare-up in the All-Ireland final replay. "It lasted 25 or 27 seconds, but the referee restored order and there was more written about it than there was about Zaire."

John Maughan, the Mayo manager, suggested a second referee might help keep order during matches, but Dublin's Charlie Redmond wasn't convinced. "People have said maybe a second referee would help, some people say that would make it twice as bad, I don't know," but the grin on his face made it pretty clear which category he fell into.

The only ugly brawls you get in darts tournaments are those involving members of the audience who have been drinking pints of lager for 12 hours. The same punters were spoiled for choice at the weekend when the official and unofficial world championships, created four years ago when a second darts federation was formed, were televised by Sky Sports and the BBC.

Sky's star attraction is, of course, commentator Sid Waddell, but the Beeb nearly lost their big name when "the most charismatic player the game has ever known" (as they told us), Bobby George, had to battle his way through five qualifying rounds just to reach the finals.

"A heaving sweatshop of ambition" was how the reporter described the qualifying competition, held in a London hotel, where 250 players fought it out for the seven available places in the final stages. Bobby wasn't all that happy about having to mix it with 249 over-ambitious pub players. "I don't like this meself, I like to be a pop star straight in, but the rules say I've get to qualify."

Round one was no problem for Bobby, but round two threw up a new challenge for Mr Charisma - the women's world number one. Francis Hoenselaar was attempting to become the first woman to qualify for the World Championships, but big Bobby stood in her way.

In a best-of-three-sets match, Hoenselaar took the first and Bobby began to sweat. He fought back though, despite having his throwing arm weighed down by 11 chunky gold bracelets, and eventually clinched the match.

"Come `ere darlin' - you played extremely well. I gave ya the first set 'cos I felt sorry for ya, you know darlin," he said as he stroked her shoulder and then, well, licked her hand when she offered it in congratulations. Wonder if Bobby ever licked Jocky Wilson's hand at the end of a match. Probably not - if he did he would have needed an operation to have his darts surgically removed from where the sun don't shine.