On Soccer: And so the betting industry-inspired "who will succeed Brian Kerr as the manager of the Ireland football team" debacle rumbles on. In case you're not up to speed on the current state of play, John Aldridge has been the front-runner for the job since Friday when a chain of bookies threatened, for the umpteenth time in the last few weeks, to close their books on the issue. Rumour subsequently had it that the alarm bells had been set off in the firm's HQ by an unidentified punter walking into a shop in Glasgow in Glasgow and having £600 on the former Liverpool striker to get the job.

This, of course, is a rather modest sum to set pulses racing at the sort of firm that possesses shops across Britain and Ireland as well as a decent sized internet operation and it's a little hard to imagine anyone was concerned if, indeed, such a bet was ever placed. What it, and just about every other punt on this issue since Brian Kerr had his FAI mobile repossessed, seems to have presented is an opportunity for bookies to generate publicity through the sports pages.

Thus, over the past short few weeks, we have been treated on an almost daily basis to the news that some anonymous figure with a substantial (we're talking at least double figures here) sum in his hand and a knowing look in his eye has potentially ambushed the industry by blowing his entire wad on . . . well, where do we begin.

Since genuine FAI target Martin O'Neill sought to distance himself from the race early on we have had betting suspended or, crucially, nearly suspended on, amongst others, George Burley (in the wake of his sacking by Hearts), Bobby Robson (after what was, even by the standards of football a half-hearted statement of interest) and, more recently, Aldridge.

Some of the names floated have, admittedly, had a little more to them than others. Robson, Phillippe Troussier and Terry Venables may not actually top your list of preferences but there is, or was in the case of the Frenchman, some sort of case to be made for them even if it seems virtually certain that none had been approached at the time they made the headlines.

Given his lack of experience, Steve Staunton's emergence as a front-runner was a little harder to fathom. Asked about the subject, his boss at Walsall, Paul Merson, said that the pair would arrive into training reading the articles linking him with the job and then wonder whether the phone would ring.

Many of the newspapers, meanwhile, have been nervous but ultimately willing participants in the bookmakers' rather transparent attempts to drum up business. The Venables candidature, for instance, got a lot of coverage after e-mails flooded into newsrooms from PR firms representing the betting firms and many reporters and their editors feared missing out on a big story.

Inevitably embarrassing mistakes are made. Last time around, just before Kerr was appointed, one of the red tops went big . . . very big with a story that John Aldridge was to be unveiled by the FAI that afternoon. After it had become apparent that this was not going to happen one of the paper's reporters got a call from his desk demanding not a correction for the next morning but a follow up.

The most laughable incident to date this time came early on, before Kerr had even been sacked in fact, with several papers running prominent stories two days after the Switzerland game to the effect that Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane were to be targeted together as a potential "dream team".

Even in early October this seemed just a little far fetched but the stories ran nevertheless. The next day the Irish Independent carried a "rag out", the industry term for what is a picture of its own page from the previous day's edition, a device regularly used by tabloids when boasting about some earlier exclusive.

In this case, however, the only development in relation to the Ferguson/Keane story was that the odds had been shortened, something the paper was gloating about despite the fact that readers could have had a punt on the strength of the story and would have little or no chance of winning.