”People want to be entertained, and just winning is not acceptable,” he said. ”The England players have to take that aboard.” I am thinking now about a statement Sir Matt Busby made many years ago when advances in fitness, team organisation and planning had begun to make football less of a spectacle. ”There is too much ‘mind’, coming into the game,” he said.That is only one example that occurs to me among scores of muttered protests over the way sport has progressed since Busby’s time.Of course, there has to be a balance between flair and effectiveness All the truly great players achieve it. Perhaps it was a healthy respect for shifts in public sentiment that prompted Rutherford to call for a more expansive attitude. If so they should pay attention to remarks made this week by the RFU’s technical director, Don Rutherford, as reported on these pages by my colleague, Steve Bale. Like most onlookers, I have not questioned many experts but it is safe to assume the audience generally, even the most myopic Englishman, thrilled to the extent of Thomas’s daring and imagination.As for the proposition that Thomas was merely indulging a gift from the womb, a fascinating possibility is that he was taking affirmative action, going beyond what his intelligence would normally permit in order to make a statement about modern rugby.Some people involved directly with the game, and football for that matter, may be sensing with disfavour the sort of philosophy I seem to be encouraging. Anyone who was at Twickenham last Saturday or watched the game on television, could not have failed to see this in a succession of impudent ruses employed by the excitingly talented young Welsh stand-off, Arwel Thomas.
Annoyingly, if predictably, some coaches and critics have since found fault with Thomas on the grounds that the risks he takes are sure to bring more sorrow than satisfaction.This can only be described as loose thinking.

It has been a habit of this column to honour, as people used to put it, “the ball artist”, the team games players in all their variety who never flinch from the notion that sport should be entertaining. Kenya pulled out of staging football’s African Nations’ Cup this year, because of a lack of money for renovations to a stadium.. Another, Paul Tergat, the world champion, has said he wants his second world title there.The ruling will not affect Kenya’s cricket World Cup campaign, which has separate sources of financial support.Funding is the major problem for Kenyan sport. “We may also cancel the national trials that lead to the championships. There is no point in going through the trials process if we are not going to send a team to the championships anyway.”One Nigerian, John Ngugi, the former world champion, had planned to make his top-level return in South Africa now that a ban imposed by the International Amateur Athletic Federation for refusing a random dope test has been cut short.

Athletics

Next month’s World Cross-Country Championships in Cape Town could be deprived of some premier competitors because of funding cuts by the Kenyan government.
The Kenya National Sports Council announced yesterday they would not fund any national teams before the Olympics, provoking a threat of withdrawal from the championships on 23 March.The chairman of the Kenya Amateur Association, Isaiah Kiplagat, said the team might withdraw if it was covered by the KNSC directive. Another thorny technical issue is how to ensure that only those who have paid the “per-view” fee receive the television signal. This might mean sending out special smart cards to unscramble the video signal.. The package would have included Naseem Hamed’s defence of the World Organisation featherweight title, Joe Bugner’s return to the British ring and a major film.Sky will have to decide which of its channels could support a pay-per- view event, without annoying subscribers who have already paid to receive the relevant channel. “It’s up to Don who he sells the fight to,” Warren said.Bruno, who is thought to be getting around $7m (pounds 4.6m) for a first defence of the title he won last year after linking up with Warren and King, wants extra money for helping Sky with promotional activity, but this has no bearing on his contract.The contest, to be shown here live at about 4 am on 17 March, is more or less certain to be a pay-per-view event, although plans to include it in a six-hour package have fallen through. Bruno’s contract covers all aspects of media coverage, including pay-per-view.”Warren pointed out also that Bruno’s contract to meet Tyson at the MGM casino in Las Vegas on 16 March is not with Sky, but with Don King Productions Incorporated.