Couldn't you have volunteered for a country light on canoeists?

I worked witha guy who had Commonwealth Games qualifying standards for both the long jump and 100M (cue Commonwealth Games qualifying standard jokes...) and was born in Jersey who at the time had no reps for either event. He contacted their athletics committee letting them know about his availability etc, and even offered to pay for his travel and accommodation and his kit and suit, so keen was he just to compete (understandably). Bizarrely they refused to consider him with no reason given. Completely off topic, but true, story.

Wow. That's still bloody impressive, even though you're obviously gutted.

To be honest I reckon I never got picked because I didn't go to University, they were more interested in people who were at Uni and not some rough ar5e plumber from Haydock.

That was really what I was touching on earlier in a response about amateurism in the Olympics. Many sports – athletics and rowing to mention but two – were 'amateur', which was simply an effective way of keeping the hoi polloi out. After all, if you didn't have a private income you wouldn't be able to find the time to train etc.

It's no different really to what happened in rugby.

And it wouldn't remotely surprise me if there were still ways in which such things went on.

On only a very slightly different tack, I remember in the 1970s people would always say that the only reason Jack Simmons and David Hughes never got capped for England was because they "ate their peas off their knife". The importance of class was greater, for many, than winning. And I think we're really only just starting to see the end of the culture that that left us with.

presumably Steve McNamara wasn't in charge of the Jersey Athletics associations at that time and they wanted people to represent them who actually had an afinity with and loyalty to the place, not just because they are not good enough for their own country.

In Cricket, there were Gentlemen and there were Players.
Often they would have separate changing facilities and would be listed in the programme diferently ... a Gentleman would be listed as, say, E Barbudo but a Player would be Barbudo, E.
And, as late as the 1960's(*), it was not unknown to announce over the PA a correction to the programme if a Player had been listed in the Gentlemen's manner.

(*) If memory serves.

Very good programme on radio 4 about 6 weeks ago that covered in detail this very topic including the PA announcements. Very interesting indeed.

W C Grace made considerable wealth from his cricketing "expenses" far more than his career in the medical profession

So, is this what the "Olympic Legacy" really means?

rlNewham Council embark on social cleansing programmerl, a sad indictment on this coalition's policy of capping rent subsidies, without introducing a rent cap. When all the poor people have been moved from the capital, how will the rich get their tables waited on, streets cleaned etc?

I'm not sure you can blame 30+ years of housing mismanagement on the Olympics.

Sure there is some short term profiteering going on but by the looks of it that isn't the issue here.

So what will be happening to the 2,800 homes that will be vacant by the end of the year?

I used to work with a man who remembered going to Lord's and seeing Middlesex and Yorkshire come out: 10 of the hosts emerged from the pavilion and just one from the dressing room where the 'players' were housed. With Yorkshire, it was the other way around.

I remember reading somewhere that in rowing, 'amateurism' helped to keep Thames barge rowers out of the sport. Indeed, it was still unusual when someone like Steve Redgrave broke into the sport, given that he didn't attend a public school.

When I was doing sports journalism (up to 1999), the [iTimes[/i would publish an annual list of the top 10 best paid sportsmen.

At that time, there were never any footballers in it. Will Carling used to feature regularly, though.

The athletes village? Aren't they going to a housing association?

Landing the state of East London's (and the rest of it to be honest) at the door of the Olympics is a red herring, it hasn't helped any but successive governments have failed to grasp the stupidly high cost of housing in general and in the South East in particular.

On the housing

rlLinkrl

rl'Right, it's going to be chaotic so we'd like you to completely change your everyday lives to accommodate it.'rl