Clive's a nightmare

NOW that the series is lost and Sir Clive Woodward's humiliation is complete, the Lions coach really has only one more worthwhile duty to perform before his reign comes to an end with what the smart money says will be another excruciating evening in New Zealand on Saturday.

Just as the good Knight documented how "he" won the World Cup for England in Australia two years ago in his triumphalist book Winning, Woodward must now produce a work that tells us how he did what he did in New Zealand these past few months, how he conspired to turn what could have been one of the greatest of all Lions tours into unquestionably one of the worst. Future generations need to know exactly how it should not be done.

Then again, in the wake of the Lions record loss to the All Blacks yesterday, Woodward said that he wouldn't change anything he had done. So, presumably, he felt he was justified in selecting out-of-form players for the first Test as well as opting for various combinations that had played little or no rugby together since they touched down in New Zealand. "We have just got to accept it and be positive," he said.

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No doubt the many thousands of Lions supporters, who have bankrupted themselves to go on tour, will accept this with a stoic shrug. I would have paid an awful lot of money to witness Woodward going into a pub in Wellington last night and telling the dejected tourists to keep their chins up. The coach would find himself at the bottom of the world's largest ruck in about three seconds flat.

Woodward believes that he is one of the great coaches and, knowing him, I'm not at all convinced that this tour will have disabused him of that notion. You might think that the record books will torment him for the rest of time, but in Clive's world - where only himself and Lady Clive reside - the 2005 Lions have been the victims of horrendous luck and dirty play from the hosts.

Yesterday, for example, he said that Jonny Wilkinson hitting the post with his first penalty of the match was "a key moment". You can't reason with a man like this.

World Cup be damned, Woodward has now lost any semblance of credibility as an international coach. In any case, there has always been a suspicion that his reputation was built on the back of Martin Johnson's inspired leadership, that without the force of nature that was the former England captain, Woodward would have been exposed years ago.

Further weight was lent to that argument in the 2004 Six Nations championship, the first after Johnson's retirement. England were desperately poor that season and Woodward did nothing to arrest the situation. What he did instead was resign, in something of a strop.

Giving him the Lions job was a cataclysmic error, a dark chapter in its history that we will all spend four years reading about until the next epic journey sets off for South Africa in 2009. So, arise, Sir Clive, the champ turned chump.

Strachan will have to face up to Balde facts

THE Bobo Balde business is an entertaining little sideshow at Celtic Park. Balde is currently twisting in the wind around Parkhead which is a fair old feat for a man as immobile as he.

Despite having his worst season since arriving from Toulouse in 2001, the physical but utterly one-dimensional central defender had his head turned a few weeks back by supposed interest from Bayern Munich.

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You may remember that on the very day Gordon Strachan was unveiled as Celtic's new manager, Balde was swooning all over the national press at the suggestion that the Germans might be interested in him.

If they were keen, then their enthusiasm died pretty quickly but that did not cool Bobo's ardour one bit.

But now his flirtations with Schalke have also ended unsatisfactorily and, it has to be said, rather embarrassingly. His agent, Mick Oliver, said Schalke had made an offer "but it was a different offer to the one we wanted. We also have to ask whether Schalke is a bigger club than Celtic." You wonder when Oliver started questioning the scale of the German club's operation. Was it, perhaps, after he realised that their estimation of Balde's worth didn't tally with his own or that of his client?

Oliver is giving the impression that Balde has other approaches to consider and that may be the case. You could, for instance, see him catching the eye of a lower-order Premiership club but that wouldn't do for Balde.

He wants one of Europe's top ten clubs or else he says he is going to stay where he is. Clearly Celtic's defensive travails of last season have not diminished his self-confidence a whole lot.

You wonder, though, what Strachan made of Oliver's assertion that Celtic are now "in the driving seat" to keep the defender in Glasgow. Does Strachan really want him in Glasgow?

After all, it has been only five months since Balde was apparently on his way to the Premiership. Middlesbrough were his suitors then but Martin O'Neill did a deal to keep him. Given the way he finished the season it was not the most astute piece of business the Ulsterman ever did.

Balde's great asset and the one quality which has over-ridden a fairly limited footballing ability is his iron will. His sloppy displays in Celtic's capitulation in the league at the tail-end of last season along with his prevarication in recent weeks will do nothing to convince Strachan that his will is as strong as it was once was.

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Oliver seems to have realised that now. Nobody could blame the manager if he decided that the penny dropped too late.

Burley needs to see the colour of money now

TYNECASTLE'S growing reputation as the windbag capital of the SPL was further borne out by the events of Thursday, when their tiresome search for a new manager concluded with the unveiling of George Burley. Nothing against Burley; he's a good operator and Hearts are lucky to have him, particularly since they seemed set on offering the job to Sir Bobby Robson and then to Nevio Scala, two men whose best days are long behind them.

I fear for Burley, though. Vladimir Romanov has, I am certain, made fancy claims about challenging the supremacy of the Old Firm. This was not long before Hearts refused to stump up the two bob to Bristol City to make permanent Lee Miller's loan deal, despite the striker's torrent of goals. At Burley's crowning the other day, George Foulkes gave an example of Romanov's determination to make good on his Old Firm ambition. "There is money there if he [Burley] needs to spend it," said the chairman, "but it is important we get the correct type of players at Tynecastle and, if there is a fee involved, we will not be paying over the odds."

A chilling statement of intent, I think you'll agree. Quite understandably, Rangers and Celtic are besides themselves with worry. Frankly, Chelsea would want to watch out.