With a bit of luck Gordon Banks didn't read Thursday's London Times. If he did he was entitled to heave a slightly exasperated sigh and curse the heavens for not postponing his birth for a decade or three.

Tagged on to a piece on young Stanley Collymore's decision to give up on football, when maybe football should have given up on him a long time ago, were three lines explaining why Banks is auctioning his 1966 World Cup medal: he wants to give his children a few bob while he's still alive to see them enjoy it.

In another paper, he was quoted as insisting that he wasn't selling the medal because of any financial problems, but conceding that he wasn't exactly "super rich" either. "This medal signifies the proudest moment of my life . . . (so) . . . it will have to go to someone who loves soccer and has a few quid," he said.

Not sure about the "loving soccer' bit, but Collymore, the only English footballer to make Paul Gascoigne look like a model pro, certainly has a few quid, having earned anything between £12,000 and £25,000-a-week for the past six or seven years. Add in all those signing-on fees, sponsorship deals (including the £2 million boot contract he secured on joining Liverpool) and sundry tabloid exclusives and he could snap up Banks' medal in a trice, toss it in his bottom drawer, and barely notice the blip in his next bank statement.

True, we're in danger of descending into a violin-accompanied lament here, of the "in my day we couldn't afford a shoebox in the middle of the road so all 39 of us lived, barefooted and starving, in a hedge - and thanked God every day for it" variety.

And true, comparing the rewards footballers received in Banks' day to Collymore's is utterly pointless because they're incomparable worlds. But still, considering the respective contributions the two players made to English football and the contrast in the comfort of their lives at the end of their careers, there's an infuriating sense of injustice.

While Banks is flogging his medal at Christie's, Collymore, according to the Guardian, is considering opening a "trendy clothes shop" in London "using his extensive knowledge of buying and wearing clothes".

Perhaps he'll specialise in a few of those pricey, flashy designer labels that look good for a month but then lose their shine, become a little threadbare and then disintegrate, because they're not made to last. And in the end you've no option but to sell them second-hand to someone who has nothing else to wear. Apologies, but the analogy is irresistible, as Roy Evans and John Gregory, Bradford and Real Oviedo, would no doubt concur.

Couldn't help but think of Keith Gillespie, too, this week and the creepy part fate plays in shaping our one shot at life. One of the many "what ifs" that pop up in discussions on Collymore's wasted career centres on Alex Ferguson's attempt to buy him from Nottingham Forest in 1995. He intended making the then Forest manager Frank Clark an offer he couldn't refuse for the striker, but when he called the club Clark had gone home with the flu. So, desperate for a proven goalscorer, he rang Kevin Keegan instead and ended up agreeing a deal to buy his second choice, Andy Cole.

There is, of course, an assumption in this "if only" tale that Ferguson would have got the best out of Collymore, that the player would never have dared inform his boss that he wasn't "in the right frame of mind for the game, gaffer". If he'd tried, one suspects, Ferguson's boot would have had to have been surgically removed from that part of Collymore where the sun don't shine.

Adding some weight to this "if only" notion is that if Ferguson could have got the best out of the erstwhile unmanageable Eric Cantona, he could have handled Collymore, perhaps the only figure in English football more paranoid than himself.

"Don't worry son, the whole world's out to get me too," he'd probably have said to him, "so let's prove 'em wrong together." Maybe that might have done the trick, maybe not.

Keith Gillespie? Well, if Clark hadn't the flu that time he would have been in his office when Ferguson phoned and, most likely, would have accepted the offer he couldn't have refused. So Ferguson would never have phoned Kevin Keegan, who insisted on Gillespie being part of the Cole deal. Gillespie would never have left Old Trafford, where Ferguson rated him highly, nor would he have spiralled depressingly downwards into a disciplinefree world that saw him gamble a fortune away and left him, today, kicking his heels, unwanted, in the Blackburn reserves.

If, if, if. Futile auld talk, of course, but still, makes you look fate in the eye and ask "what did I do to upset you?'.

Gillespie can only wonder, Collymore can only blame everyone but Collymore. The end of Stanley's road? Probably when he checked in to that celebrity clinic. The one from which celebs emerge with their suspicion that it's everyone's fault but their own expensively reinforced.

So, Stanley can retire secure in the knowledge that if it wasn't for Walsall, Wolves, Stafford Rangers, Crystal Palace, Southend, Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, Aston Villa, Fulham, Leicester, Bradford and Real Oviedo's failure to understand him he'd have won 100 England caps by now and would have been as loved and respected as Gordon Banks. Oooh Stanley, you coulda been a contender.