Compiled by JOHNNY WATTERSON

Gadafy junior's football fantasy

IT WASN’T always hard times for the currently set-upon ruling family of Libya. In 2003 Italy’s most eccentric football club, the First Division team Perugia, agreed to sign up the son of Africa’s most eccentric dictator, Colonel Gadafy. Working on the premise the genes that made dad a real life dictator would make Gadafy junior, Saadi, a maestro of the catenaccio, were sadly misplaced.

The man who used to run Libyan football may not have beaten his players for losing matches as did another dictator’s son in Iraq, but he wasn’t afraid to use daddy’s calling card to get his game abroad.

Saadi is currently up against some rebellious tribes and Nato bombing around Tripoli but the tenacity of the colonel’s son knows no bounds. While Perugia manager Serse Cosmi obstinately refused to play the 30-year-old at the time, the president of the club Luciano Gaucci, whose brainchild it was, insisted that he did so.

Saadi joined Perugia as a forward and as a VIP with “international appeal” to help boost Perugia’s media profile.

But Cosmi refused to even put him on the bench. Just one half of one game, pleaded the president. Cosmi explained succinctly that Gadafy was, well, totally crap at football.

In October of that season Gadafy’s urine sample was found to contain traces of an illegal substance, Nandrolone, and he was banned for three months, without ever having played for the first team. How inconvenient.

It wasn’t over.

Having served his ban, Saadi finally saw some action in May of that season for 15 minutes in a key relegation battle against the team in which his family had invested many, many Lira – Juventus. A week later an attack of appendicitis closed his season. How inconvenient.

In 2006 Gadafy had his second 11 minutes of fame, turning out for Udinese in an end-of-season match against Cagliari. His statistics for the season were eight passes, one shot, two tackles.

It wasn’t over.

His final season in Italy was with Liam Brady’s old club, Sampdoria. Alas the coach felt that any time on the pitch was too much. For Saadi though it has ended happily as, a few months ago, soccer fans in Tripoli chanted his name and cheered the family regime. Opposition supporters suggested that, like Cosmi, they may not have had a choice.

Regrettable act of forcing an apology

AS ANTHONY Masterson reminded himself of the black slurp and gurgle of filling his fountain pen at the inkwell, his thoughts might have turned to the reasoning behind a forced apology, or rather, a reprisal.

Given Masterson’s choice of saying sorry in his best penmanship or ending his devotion to club side Castletown in the county championships on the back of an eight week ban, the full court press the GAA put on the Wexford goalkeeper seemed more to do with throwing their weight around the playground than persuading the wayward pupil to see a righteous path.

That they would be vainly satisfied with what is suspiciously a bogus act of contrition is itself absurd.

Control and power in crushing apparent dissent is disfiguring and as very often happens, far from fortifying the edifice, this time official Gaeldom, the GAA belittles itself in the act.

The instruction to write a “sorry” letter for criticising an official after a marginal decision sent Wexford spiralling out of the championship is an attempted humiliation of an honourable player and smacks of “Big House” arrogance.

Even the most strap-happy of house masters would see it as ill-conceived.

But that is not what it is about.

It is about maintaining power and if going to these lengths to maintain it keeps the parishes happy then let us watch as the GAA Central Competitions Control Committee squashes little Masterson and makes him an example to everyone who thinks of sharing an opinion.

Poignant meeting of Belfast's wayward sons

TWO THINGS that were historically connected popped up this week. The first was a musical Dancing Shoes based on the life of the late George Best. Haven’t seen it but can’t quite get the head around it. Maybe two acts, one happy, one tragic.

The second was the promotion of a programme to be screened by RTÉ later in the autumn called Frank O’Farrell: The Shadow of Busby. It tells the unravelling story of Frank O’Farrell, who in 1971 became manager of Manchester United. The Corkman was faced with two impossible tasks.

The first was to follow in the footsteps of the club’s legendary manager, Sir Matt; the second, and perhaps more difficult, was to control the increasingly fractious and unreliable genius that was “Dancing Shoes”.

O’Farrell lasted just 18 months at Old Trafford and departed with at least three years left on his contract. We will wait and see the programme but it was said that O’Farrell’s impersonal approach, whereby every player had to schedule an appointment just to see him, didn’t help general morale or endear him towards one very particularly wayward Belfast boy.

There is one scene in Dancing Shoes, where Best is visited in hospital by the late Alex Higgins. What a conversation! That passage alone would be worth the cost of tickets.

Keeping Suzann on the straight and narrow

NAME DROP time. Suzann Pettersen. Played golf with her last year at the Pro-Am in Killeen Castle prior to the Ladies Irish Open. Depending on the week, she is ranked at number three or four in the world.

Her caddy Dave Brooker, was an interesting individual. From Yorkshire he loved football more than anything, more than golf and as a schoolboy he signed forms with Leeds United before an ankle injury ended that career. Dave’s name came to mind after Adam Scott’s current looper Steve William’s excitedly listed his triumphs after his man won last week at Bridgestone.

The critical fallout for the Kiwi was warranted but what was undervalued was what Williams may have done for Scott over the four days. Brooker’s job with Pettersen wasn’t just to clean her clubs, get the yardage and carry her bag. Each time she lined up for a shot, the former six handicapper would stand directly behind. When she brought the club into the back swing, he would sometimes say “no” and mid-swing she’d stop dead, realign and start again. That’s a lot of trust in the bagman. Maybe Williams had a similar input?

Stakes never higher for 'amateur' boxers

TODAY THE amateur boxers of Ireland will have taken part in the final day of an Elite Competition in which many of them did not wish to participate. Ken Egan, the Olympic silver medallist in Beijing took part. Paddy Barnes, the Olympic bronze medallist in Beijing, Joe Ward and Ray Moylette, both current European champions, did not. European Championship medal winners Tyrone McCullough (bronze) and Eric Donovan (bronze) did, while Darren O’Neill (silver) did not.

There is no sport in Ireland that can match boxing’s global reach, yet a month out from the World Championships in Azerbaijan and an important stepping stone for London 2012, several of the proven champions are in a fuss because it’s an opportunity for them to be beaten with a lot more than meets the eye at stake.

The official line has been stern.

It is a one-off event that gives all and sundry a pop at Olympic, World and European medal winners.

But the boxers could be irritated for another reason – due to the recent announcement by the international governing body, the AIBA.

They are planning to revise the sport beyond recognition and have decided on a Professional Boxing programme that would both govern the fighters and run professional competitions. Essentially this new organisation will audaciously compete with the established WBA and WBO, etc and it will pay contracted athletes to take part in their scheduled professional bouts.

The best amateurs will soon be cherrypicked to fight professionally by their own organisation called the APB (abbreviation of AIBA Professional Boxing), which will control everything. It is, they believe, better than the current situation where other professional boxing organisations loot the amateur ranks.

Straight away dollar signs flash up. The organisers claim it will be transparent. Not everyone believes that.

According to the AIBA, boxers will be ranked at International level, Continental level and National level. The most glamorous World Division will feature the top 20 boxers in each weight category fighting over 10 rounds for ranking competitions and 12 rounds for title matches. At Continental level the boxers ranked 21 to 50 will participate and at National level those ranked 51 and below compete.

Head guards are also coming off so as to recognise the personalities and, presumably, see the blood with the first season kicking off in the spring of 2013 with the draw of a fresh crop of Olympic Champions from London.

Current professional boxers aged 19-40 years old will be permitted to take part in the first season only. In the next year or so 17-year-old Ward could slip in at the lower age end and Egan, 30 years old in January, at the other.

The APB boxers will also be allowed to compete in the Olympic Games with Rio 2016 the target to, as they say, “make this dream come true.”

It is an expansive, ambitious change to the ethos and running of the sport and, as yet, no one knows how it will pan out.

But be sure that those boxers, who have been nervously competing at the National Stadium all week, have a longer-term view towards London and beyond.

This week has more far-reaching implications than Olympic glory. Professional contracts will appear in 2012.