Nick Westby: Odd timing of Wilson’s demise with finishing line in clear sight

Loyalty and football have never been common bedfellows.
Danny WilsonDanny Wilson
Danny Wilson

Players who serve a club for longer than a decade, or for their entire career, are revered as legends and stalwarts and placed on pedastals by admiring fans because let’s be honest, those great servants are few and far between.

There are not many clubs nowadays who have a player coming to the end of a career they began 15 or 16 years ago at the same hallowed turf.

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Players have all the power and they tend to use it their advantage. Who wouldn’t?

Managers used to be the loyal lot, sticking by clubs and clinging to jobs regardless of the fact that the minute the going got tough they would be out on their ear.

Then football managers started biting back. When vacancies came at bigger clubs or teams higher up the pyramid, cvs were sent in at a rate of knots.

If chairmen aren’t showing me loyalty, then why should I reciprocate, seemed to be the mantra. And again, who can blame them?

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Michael Appleton has become a figure of fun among football fans this season, having left Portsmouth because he thought the grass was greener at Blackpool, only to leave the seaside 60-odd days later to head east across Lancashire to Blackburn, because he realised the grass at Blackpool was actually bare and patchy.

When he got sacked at Blackburn by owners that have hardly covered themselves in glory, there was many a follower of football who revelled in a little schadenfraude.

It was an example of a football club taking back the power, which was similar to what we saw at Sheffield United last week, when loyalty was eschewed again, this time in the form of the Blades board sacking Danny Wilson.

It is their perogative of course, but the timing was wretched and confusing.

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Wilson had taken the Blades to within three points and then a penalty kick off promotion from League One last term, in his first season in charge at Bramall Lane.

Then when all his star players were sold and not adequately replaced, he still managed to keep the Blades in the promotion hunt and in the top six all season.

But poor home form was his undoing.

He made just one mistake and lost his job.

He still had five games, potentially three more in the play-offs, to try and fulfil his mission statement for the season.

If the Sheffield United board thought Wilson was not their man, then fair enough, but at least let him finish the season and then decide, or sack him earlier than the middle of April to give the man coming in time to work wonders.

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Chris Morgan could quite foreseeably complete the job Wilson started, but other than give the very same players a kick up the backside and the fans a spring in their step, time ensures his influence will be limited.

Morgan is one of those who bucks the trend, a loyal footballer who has served United with distinction in a number of capacities for a decade.

If he gets the job done, hopefully he will get the reward of an extended contract, time to stamp his footprint on United and the patience of the board to let him rebuild Sheffield United properly, safe from knee-jerk reactions and ill-timed interventions.

Tiger Woods, as brilliant a golfer as he is, also seems to be above the law.

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His admission that he dropped the ball two yards further back on the 15th hole of Friday’s second round of the Masters at Augusta, caused quite a stir over the weekend.

Under the letter of the laws that govern disqualification, Woods risked omission on the grounds that he signed for an incorrect score.

But after being hauled in front of the tournament committee Woods was given a slap on the wrist and a two-shot penalty. The world No 1 was in the hunt last night for a 15th major title, when many felt he should have been at home watching it on the television.

Golf is a noble game, where players readily disqualify themselves because of the most minor of rule infringements, that they might not have meant to commit but are guilty of nonetheless. David Toms and Padraig Harrington are just two who have called a penalty on themselves and headed home early in recent years – primarily to uphold the virtues that the game was built upon.

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Woods could have walked away, or he could have been dispelled by a rules committee who had already shown their inhuman side when penalising 14-year-old Tianlang Guan a shot for slow play.

But on this occasion they were leniant, citing the fact that it was not they nor Woods who had spotted the incident, but a television viewer and then journalists, whose broader knowledge of the rules was piqued when Woods relaid the tale of his woes on the 15th hole.

Woods is the most bankable star in golf, and arguably, in all of sport. Had he been disqualified, the Masters weekend would have been contested without its leading name.

Was that at the heart of the decision to let him off? We may never know, but it’s a pity Woods didn’t take the decision out of their hands.

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People in sport suffer highs and lows all the time, but rarely can a coach have experienced both ends of the spectrum in 24 hours.

They were the emotions that Welshman Clive Griffiths lived through this weekend.

On Saturday, his Doncaster Knights team lost what amounted to a relegation decider against Jersey in rugby union’s Championship. Twenty-four hours later, the rugby league team he coaches, North Wales Crusaders, defeated London Skolars 44-6 to go top of rugby league’s embryonic Championship One table.

The irony was not lost on Griffiths, nor had the hurt from the day before receded as Doncaster Knights – barring a miracle – prepare for life in the third tier.

and another thing...

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As a lover of golf and of all things Olympics, the thought of the sport joining the programme for Rio in 2016 never sat right with me.

Golfers are not amateur sportsmen and women in the great traditions of the Olympic ideal, and a gold medal will never mean as much as a green jacket to the leading golfers of the world. These were my reservations, upheld by many.

Then a thought occurred watching the opening round of the Masters that made me change my views, made me realise that yes, golf does have a place in the Olympics.

Two of the stories of Thursday’s play was the 73 shot by Chinese amateur Tianlang Guan and the 68 carded by Fred Couples.

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One is a 14-year-old schoolboy who showed he was more than capable of holding his own with golf’s finest, the other a 53-year-old veteran who can still hit a tee shot as far as most of the pumped-up 20- and 30-somethings who compete.

Granted, Couples knows his way around Augusta. But what other sport can be played to such a high standard by competitors spanning 40 years? Only equestrian, archery and shooting can lay such a claim, and they are Olympic staples.

So if they belong, so should golf.