New era of glasnost?

THERE will surely be no repeat of the England squad keeping details of their Euro 2016 in-house darts competition under wraps now that Joe Hart has missed out on the squad heading to Russia.

Hart said in France: ‘I’m not here to talk about darts.’ Gareth Bale’s response — ‘Right boys, do you want to know the table tennis results?’ — summed up just how different England and Wales were in dealing with the media.

BEFORE one questions whether it was an appropriate use of licence fee payers’ money for the Beeb to stage their World Cup launch on the roof-top of hipster Ace Hotel in achingly trendy Shoreditch, at least they put on a bash. ITV just sent out a press release about their World Cup team, questioning whether a launch was an efficient use of their budget and the difficulty of getting everyone together. It is also unlikely that Sky would have wanted their star turn Gary Neville appearing at an ITV promotion.