There will, no doubt, be some straight and unpleasant talking and it is not before time.The English clubs are not empowered to engage in any negotiations independently of the union. Their oxygen for this latest attempted coup has come from a bunch of like-minded owners in Wales with the support of two or three leading figures within the Rugby Football Union and Welsh Rugby Union. But neither body would consider sanctioning this latest proposal for a British league, and the Scots, who were by all accounts to be included in the plans, have not even been approached. In common with England and Wales, the Scottish Rugby Union would flatly reject the proposals.So what is driving this latest assault on the government of the game? As ever it is money and control. Club rugby remains in the same old financial pickle despite the so-called wage cap and the promise of more money from European competition. The Sky deal, bad as it was and which is expected to cost the RFU substantial sums of money when the result of the valuation is announced in the next week or so, has at least had the merit of uniting the home unions.There is now a general acceptance that they must never again act in isolation when it comes to selling off the game’s most valuable properties. As a result, the next television negotiations in 2002, following the expiry of the Sky contract, will be conducted collectively.

Given the need for the game to reach the widest possible audience in order to raise its profile and awareness, and the BBC’s determination to become more competitive in the sports rights market, Sky cannot be confident of getting the exclusivity they currently enjoy in the English game.Hence their eagerness to gain a foothold in Europe which, so far as club rugby is concerned, is the one asset of significant value. There are rumours, vehemently denied but persistent enough to warrant exploration, of financial inducements made by the television company to the top clubs should they agree to a European tournament covered and underwritten by Sky.It may, of course, be coincidence, but Walkinshaw, the man who has been pressing for the new league, is one of England’s representatives on the board of European Rugby Cup. If nothing else there is a conflict of interests in this arrangement which is unacceptable.If there is any good to have come from the chaos and near anarchy of the past couple of years, it is the realisation by rugby’s rulers, in the nick of time, that these people are posing the gravest of threats to the game’s future.. IF THE America’s Cup has been a somewhat uneventful regatta until now, this last week has delivered an enticing combination of damage, disaster and intriguing results: Young America nearly sank after splitting in two, the Japanese lost their mast and the previously impervious Italian Prada team got beaten for the first time. The week brought more wind and, at four points a race, more pressure. First up was the Young America split that will have every other America’s Cup designer worried. Young America was racing upwind in what was later confirmed as a sub-20-knot wind when the boat slammed into an awkward sea and broke in the middle.

It’s not unusual in America’s Cup boats, where around 25 tons of lead are slung in a keel bulb supported by the thinnest of fin structures from the middle of a highly stressed hull.
No sooner had the Americans limped out of the limelight than the Japanese were right there to replace them after a crewing error cost them their mast. Calamity came to call during the Japanese bout with the Louis Vuitton Cup favourite AmericaOne. A runner tail, which supports the mast, slipped out of the winch and the mast broke in two halfway up. The Asura skipper Peter Gilmour was ahead of his rival Paul Cayard at the time and the race was shaping into a vintage contest.But as Cayard was improving his standings unchallenged, the Italian Prada team suffered their first defeat at the hands of another improving team – Team Dennis Conner. Ken Read, helmsman of Conner’s Stars & Stripes, trailed at the start but his navigator Peter Isler hooked them into a favourable shift that allowed them to sail past the Italians. After that, Read and Stars & Stripes never looked back, the irony of the victory being the fact that the mighty Conner was not on board..

ALLISTER CARTER – Ali, as he likes to be known – is not yet the greatest, but in the last month he has certainly been having a great run. His 6-3 win over Stephen O’Connor – a Dubliner who has not fulfilled the promise implicit in winning the World Amateur title nine years ago – here on the first day of the Liverpool Victoria UK Championship was his 15th in 16 matches.
“It was a bit scrappy. Stephen kept me on the cushion a lot,” said Carter, whose highest break was 73 in the eighth frame. “I didn’t mind playing in the morning because at least I could watch the football.”This 20-year-old from Tiptree stood 142nd in the rankings at the start of the season but in reaching last month’s semi-finals of the Grand Prix at Preston he eliminated Stephen Hendry and Asia’s best player, Marco Fu. Defeat at the hands of the world number one, John Higgins, left him with take-home pay of pounds 16,500.Last week, he earned a place in February’s Benson and Hedges Masters at Wembley by taking the pounds 5,000 first prize in a satellite event and he is sure of at least another pounds 10,000 from the moment he walks out to play Steve Davis. These are not irrelevant sums to a player yet to establish himself.For the UK’s pounds 178,000 first prize, though, consider first the usual suspects, Higgins, Hendry, Mark Williams and Ronnie O’Sullivan, snooker’s fab four.

On any given day, though, particularly in the best of nine, they can be vulnerable if their concentration is not focused or if one of the circuit’s supporting acts has an inspired day.This was Hendry’s problem when he lost to Carter at Preston. Having cut short his practice because he felt he could not hit the ball any better, he missed, once he was in the arena, several pots at which a decent local- league player would be disappointed to fail.In Bournemouth a year ago, Hendry was in such psychological disarray that he lost 9-0 to Marcus Campbell. His cueing had also gone slightly out of kilter and he had to summon the will to restore himself technically. This process culminated in winning his seventh World title at Sheffield last spring, surpassing the six that Davis won in the Eighties.This fortnight he can equal Davis’s six UKs and has already won six Masters to Davis’s three. He will be very highly motivated to regain the edge of form which gave him the season’s first two prizes in the Champions Cup and British Open.. TREVOR BROOKING is an angry man.

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