First thrash the opposition, then thrash your woman

Geoffrey Boycott (left) is the latest hero to hit his girl. Emma Cook on why sporting winners lose control at home

THE VERY qualities that make sportsmen successful on the pitch and in the ring are those that cause aggression in their private lives. According to sports psychologists, players' anger can be comfortably insulated by the rules of the game, but in everyday life such impulses are much harder to regulate.

Last week the cricketer Geoffrey Boycott was the latest in a series of sportsmen and former players to be revealed as having attacked a woman. A French court found the former Yorkshire batsman guilty of beating his girlfriend Margaret Moore during an incident in the luxurious Hotel du Cap in Antibes. Mr Boycott protested loudly, saying: "I never touched her. That is a fact."

But there was a pervading tang of deja vu about the tale Miss Moore told. Among the other high-profile sportsmen recently accused of being unable to control their tempers in private - always with female victims - are the footballers Paul Gascoigne and Lee Chapman, and the boxer Frank Bruno.

According to Dr George Sik, a psychologist specialising in sport, the games these men play enable them to keep their tempers under control - for the duration of the match. "In sport, those very open displays of aggression are allowed - in a way that they're not for bank or supermarket managers," he said.

And the important issue, said Dr Sik, is control: "In sport they're encouraged to think they have control. If they're losing it in other areas of life, they find it difficult to stomach."

The ultimate loss of control is when they leave their sport. Frank Bruno admitted to one paper: "When I got out of boxing it felt like a bereavement." Boycott, too, has retired from his game which may have made him feel less powerful on some level.

Sheryl Gascoigne, Paul's wife, was one of the first in a series of women to step forth with bruises. Fourteen months ago, she was seen, according to one newspaper, with "her head bruised, her hand bandaged and her arm in a sling". Sheryl has refused to spill the beans, except to tell one paper: "Paul knows why he attacked me. It wasn't over anything - he just flipped."

One evening last October, Lesley Ash, married to former footballer Lee Chapman, fled her home in Wandsworth and reported his alleged assault to the police. She later withdrew the statement.

Frank Bruno's wife, Laura revealed her husband's aggressive streak when she told a paper earlier this month: "Frank is a gentle, loveable, cuddly man. But he is also huge. And when he spins around in anger he is terrifying." Last November, she obtained a court injunction preventing her husband from "assaulting, molesting or harassing" her.

John Williams, senior researcher at Leicester University's centre for football research, argues that to penetrate the sportsman's psyche you need to understand English masculinity as well as the links between class and sport. He said: "The game [football] recruits mainly young working- class men, cossets them and forgets about everything else." Ditto boxing.

But perhaps the main factor is not the lifestyle, or losing it, so much as the sort of personality sport attracts in the first place.

In this light, Wisden, the cricketer's bible, is significant. It says of Boycott: "A boy born into the South Yorkshire coalfield at any time in the last 50 years came into the world impressed with the need to retaliate first."

Mr Williams says of football - and to a lesser extent cricket: "The culture can often be very brutalising. They're not encouraged to speak about women in a particularly progressive way." This may not be new, but today there is increasing pressure to perform for larger amounts of money coupled with intense media scrutiny.

Mr Williams feels it's up to trainers and managers to respond to these changes. "I wonder to what extent sports clubs take seriously enough the mental well-being of their very expensive sportsmen. I think they could diffuse some of the behaviour," he said.

"It's hard for female partners to be in relationships as an equal. You'd feel you were always on the outside and second best to how he spends and devotes his time."

If the women are unhappy with their partners' sometimes loutish behaviour, all the evidence shows that sports managers would like attitudes to shift too.

Mr Williams said that more Scandinavian footballers are now being signed up because they seem to display the moderation and discipline that some of our players lack. "You can see that, in general, managers are looking at the whole person and their lifestyle," he said. And, hopefully, that will include the way they treat their wives and girlfriends.