So many people wished to pay their respects to the Daily Mail’s much-loved and highly

respected former Tennis Correspondent mike Dickson at his memorial 10 days ago that space ran out at St mary’s Church in Wimbledon and 50 or 60 of us found ourselves watching the service on a video feed in the church hall and wondering at the beauty of the tributes to mike from his wife and children. I turned around at one point to see Roger Taylor and Jeremy Bates sitting next to each other unobtrusively a few rows further back. Taylor was one of my first sporting heroes, a semifinalist three times in the singles at Wimbledon. Bates was a serious player, too, a British no 1 for many years. Their presence was a tribute to mike, most of all, but it said plenty about them, too.

I DON’T understand the fashion for rescuing goalkeepers from terrible clangers. The latest example of it happened at the London Stadium on Saturday when Alphonse Areola threw the ball in front of him because he thought he had been awarded a free-kick during West Ham’s draw with Liverpool. Except he hadn’t been awarded a free-kick. But instead of allowing play to continue and Cody Gakpo to run the ball into an empty net, referee Anthony Taylor blew his whistle and stopped play. Former referee Peter Walton praised Taylor, who is one of our best referees, for using common sense but I’m sorry, I don’t get it.

Why is it suddenly up to a referee to interfere in the outcome of a game beyond officiating the laws? What’s next? If a defender lets the ball run under his foot in a dangerous position, does the referee spare him embarrassment for that, too? Areola made a stupid mistake. He should have been made to suffer the consequences.