Sean McGuire: Who wears the trousers in football households?

Aug 17 2007 by Sean McGuire, Liverpool Daily Post

ROY KEANE has never suffered from reticence when giving us his opinions on any matter related to football.

Whether it was his dim view of the managerial qualities of Mick McCarthy or his aversion to the prawn sandwich brigade of corporate junketeers he felt were invading his beloved Old Trafford, Roy gave us all the benefit of his opinions.

Clearly, the burdens of club management have not diminished Roy’s capacity for barbed comment but his target this time is not poor Mick McCarthy or Chardonnay-swilling corporate cowboys, no, this time Roy’s almost biblical thunder is directed at – players’ wives!

Apparently some players’ wives influence their husbands in their choice of club, based on a set of criteria of which Roy strongly disapproves – proximity of designer shops, posh restaurants and expensive coffee bars being but three.

Roy is disgusted at this and firmly believes that in the he-man world of the Premier League it is the man who should wear the trousers and should decide which club he is going to play for on another much more traditional set of criteria – is the club any good, can it win trophies and will it be a place at which he can play the best football of his career?

All very commendable, though I think a little fanciful, especially if one considers the case of Garry O’Connor, who made his choice of club on an even more traditional criterion than any of the ones Roy has yet mentioned – that is money, and in Garry’s case, lots of it.

Garry has just joined Birmingham City.

Previously he had played for Hibernian in Edinburgh, but in between he had a very profitable stint with Lokomotiv Moscow.

According to Garry, when playing for Lokomotiv, ‘the money was brilliant and the bonuses were absolutely ridiculous’.

Having read a little about Garry’s time in Moscow, I can assure you he was not exaggerating.

His basic salary – and remember this is Garry we are talking about, not one of his more illustrious co-workers – was £16,000 tax free.

On top of that the bonus for winning a derby game was £100,000, that is £100,000 per game, since there were up to 14 derbies per season.

But all that pales into small beer when you discover the bonus for winning the cup final, £250,000: when Garry said it was ‘absolutely ridiculous’ he was not guilty of sporting hyperbole.

Incidentally, he was advised by his manager at Hibs to sign for Lokomotiv on the very sound basis that after a season or two he would be made for life.

I wonder Garry’s wife thought of the shops in Moscow?

A proud day for defiant rugby league in France

FOR French rugby league, the appearance of the Catalans Dragons in the Challenge Cup final at Wembley on August 25 is a huge triumph.

Since its foundation in 1934, the game in France has faced a relentless campaign of hostility from the rugby union authorities, whose sole objective has been the destruction of the sport of rugby league in France.

Whatever the unhappy history of anti-League bias amongst some union bigots in the UK, it was never more than a mild irritation when compared with nothing less than a campaign of extirpation and expropriation waged against the great game in France. At the behest of the union authorities rugby league was actually banned by the collaborationist Vichy government in 1940, its bank accounts were plundered, its property stolen and its players, administrators and supporters victimised.

After such a history, and what a proud and defiant history it is, it will be a moment of immense sporting (and historical and social) significance when the Catalans Dragons take the field at Wembley: vive le rugby a treize!