Neville’s double trouble

THE sensitivities caused by Gary Neville’s apparently conflicting roles as England coach and Sky pundit led to the FA overreaction about a BBC website report in which Neville said Wayne Rooney ‘needs to improve’.

In an embarrassing climbdown, BBC online sports editor Stuart Rowson tweeted Neville: ‘You’re right. The headline and intro were out of context and were misleading. Not our style. Apologies. We’ve changed it.’

This furore around relatively innocuous comments demonstrates once again that Neville continuing to combine the jobs is a recipe for trouble along the road to Brazil.

GB HOCKEY chief Richard Leman has thrown in the towel in his impossible bid to beat Lord Coe to the British Olympic Association chairmanship. Leman did this the night before a BOA board meeting at which he would have been strongly lobbied not to stand. This paves the way for Coe’s BOA coronation on November 7. Meanwhile, it will not help beleaguered commercial director Hugh Chambers that none of his promised new sponsors have come on board in time for today’s summit. PLANS to merge UK Sport and Sport England look to have been scrapped. There has been no impetus from the government since the Olympics to reactivate talks and now only a potential sharing of back-office facilities is on the Whitehall agenda.

That leaves Sir Keith Mills’s brainchild of a British Sports Marketing Bureau to bring in joint sponsorship across all sports so much more critical in terms of Games legacy.

And for that to work, Mills needs the majority of sports to endorse a project that needs further explanation. The sceptical big sports can still do their own deals but need to give the BSMB a mandate to seek umbrella contracts.