Week in, week out

A RATHER SCRAPPY DOROBBIE Savage had us chuckling this week with his take on the spat between Nigel Clough and Billy Davies after the east Midlands derby at Pride Park last week.

Former Motherwell manager Davies, now in charge of Nottingham Forest, claimed his opposite number at Derby, Clough, "kneed" him during a fracas in injury-time as the Rams ran out winners. Derby player Savage, not a man used to staying out of such conflicts, weighed in via his newspaper column with a comparison which opened up a long-held debate on the merits of Scooby Doo. Savage said: "The TV pictures don't appear to show any contact between him and Billy. If there was, it was purely accidental. Billy obviously didn't see it that way and when he was being held back by the fourth official it reminded me of when Shaggy holds back Scrappy Doo while the little mutt shouts 'Let me at 'em, Let me at 'em!'"

HOW TEKLED WE ARE

WE SUSPECT the name of Robel Teklemariam will soon be on the minds of many throughout the world as the Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver this week.

Teklemariam is the only skiing representative for the Ethiopian team in Canada but has an even greater target beyond the Olympics. The cross-country skier, who finished 84th in Turin in 2006 said: "If I'm closer to the winner than I was at the last Olympics then I'll be very happy. But my real goal is to get Ethiopians involved in skiing. I don't want to be the first and the last."

BRATS THE WAY

DAIKI Kameda became the second brother of Japan's 'brat pack' boxing family to win a world title when he took the WBA flyweight belt by a unanimous decision against Denkaosan Kaovichit yesterday.

The 21-year-old's older brother Koki won the WBC flyweight title in November and Daiki's victory gave Japan their first sibling world champions.

Daiki was banned for a year for violent behaviour in a failed bid for the WBC crown in 2007 that ended in farce and multiple suspensions.

Kameda, who had branded then-champion Daisuke Naito a "cockroach" in the run-up to the fight, was banned after picking up his opponent and slamming him to the canvas. Father and former trainer Shiro was booted out of the sport for abusing the referee and Koki escaped with a warning after TV microphones caught him telling Daiki to elbow Naito in the eye.

ULTRA-SPIDERS

QUEEN'S Park home games are not normally occasions where much attention is paid to the crowd that take up less than two per cent of the capacity of the National Stadium, however a group of youngsters set out to shake a few cobwebs from the usually reserved nature of a Spiders fan when Stranraer visited on Saturday. A boisterous group of about 20 teenagers had banded together to call themselves 'The Queen's Park Ultras' and were resplendent in their brightly coloured t-shirts and shorts, waving flags and banners.

However, after half an hour of trying to create an atmosphere in a fairly isolated area of the main stand as stewards burst their balloons, they were gone. And with it a touch of colour and passion among the 553 supporters in the 52,103-capacity stadium was lost.