There is currently a great deal of turmoil in certain areas of professional sport. Here at home we have the embarrassing business of former Irish rugby captain Keith Wood refusing to join the World Cup squad because of a dispute over his "intellectual property rights", which he flatly denies is about money, though filthy lucre is certainly at the centre of the dispute, and the so-called intellectual rights seem to have rather a lot to do with selling one's image for cash.
Meanwhile an even bigger brouhaha has broken out over the sacking of West Indies cricket captain Brian Lara and his vice-captain, placing the long-awaited and historic tour of South Africa in jeopardy (at the time of writing).
In this case no one is denying that the issue is purely money, and a great deal of it.
Though not entirely devoid of diplomatic skills (ask around in Geneva, Mogadishu, Suez), there may not be much I myself can do regarding the cricket debacle. Because of my abiding interest in the game, however, I am ready to depart for Antigua at short notice if absolutely necessary, and do all I can to resolve the issue, so long as I am provided with a first-class return ticket and a half-decent suite at the Halcyon Cove.
If it sometimes seems to naive people that my compensation demands are excessive, I have to point out that life as an eminent sports figure - beg pardon, part-time public relations expert, is very short these days. We have to make what we can while we can, before the gloss goes off our game and we are forced to bite the bullet and become consultants, commentators and non-executive board members while often only in our mid-thirties. The demands on our time and expertise are intense, and our hard gem-like flame burns only briefly before flickering out.
As for helping out with the World Cup rugby impasse, therefore, given appropriate sponsorship I could perhaps write to the 86 players (other than Keith Wood) who happily signed their contracts, to inform them that they have made complete eejits of themselves, that they wouldn't recognise a rising market if they tripped over it, that their grandchildren will never forgive them for failing to make a decent financial killing when the opportunity arose, and that their intellectual rights are now on a par with those of Forrest Gump.
I do not know how fruitful this might be, but it would make a point. If reasonable expenses and a chaffeur-driven car were provided, I might then pop over to Keith Wood's isolation cubicle and offer to assist him with the production of his newspaper column, though I have no wish to patronise someone just because he is not a full-time journalist. After all, it's not actually that difficult to string a few paragraphs together (the words are all in the dictionary and it's just a question of putting them in the right order) and there are lots of lowly beetlebrowed sub-editors to look after the dreary nitty-gritty of rearranging the prose, giving it a quick polish and presenting the finished article in some sort of half-professional manner.
Following his refusal to sign the World Cup contract, and his absolute insistence that money was not the issue, Keith Wood has been treated in the media with all the dignity and consideration due by diminutive weedy journalists to any 15-stone international rugby hooker in his prime. Disappointingly, however, the occasional critical and begrudging note has been struck, though fortunately not with much force.
A modest, low-key public relations campaign might nevertheless be in order to prevent any further outbreaks of media hostility, however mild. Given, say, £25,000, perhaps by a socially concerned building society or a bank wishing to be associated with the principle of openness, I reckon I could keep the media properly on message until the thing blows over.
Brave little cricketer Brian Lara, on the other hand, has been given a terrible going-over by a vicious jackbooted press clearly intent on destroying his reputation as well as his career. The Times cricket correspondent, for example, suggested that Lara may have developed an inflated self-importance: "It has led him to believe that he is indestructible, has led to this game of Call My Bluff and has led eventually to his downfall."
Imagine such a thing being said about our own Keith Wood!
But I don't imagine that Brian Lara is going to take this sort of thing lying down. Certainly, I hope not. My people have already been in touch with his people, and I hope to travel to London shortly to have a word or two in the ear of the Times editor. Expect to see a vacancy for a cricket correspondent rather soon.
A return flight, a modest fee, a night in the Dorchester and perhaps a couple of tickets for the Royal Opera House production of Tosca at the Royal Albert Hall hardly constitute overpayment for such a useful service, and fortunately, I already know that this is the way a man like Brian Lara looks at things.
