Ethics put to the test

THE scene was the Highbury press room last December, the Saturday after George Graham had been alleged to have accepted money from the agent Rune Hauge. Jeremy Paxman stood at the rear of the room, there to compose his "celebrity match report" for another Sunday newspaper.

"There's a tenner in it for you," we joked, "if you ask the did-you- or-didn't-you question." In the event, to Paxman's surprise, no one did. About the best anyone came up with was: "Has it been a difficult week, George?"

But then, unlike us, Paxman has had little experience of football managers who evade questions or, worse, end press conferences at the hint of one that touches a nerve. Graham was a master at it. Indeed, he confessed in an unpaid-for interview, with the Independent last year that, yes, he would lie to the press if he deemed it necessary.

Now, having been rightly ostracised from the chosen profession he abused, Graham seeks to make a living from, and a laughing stock of, the very media he has messed about for so long. And, more importantly, the public. His justifications and admission only to "fleeting greed" in accepting pounds 140,500 in pounds 50 notes in plastic envelopes and pounds 285,000 in a banker's draft from Hauge is plastered all over a newspaper, which has paid him handsomely for being allowed to do so.

In addition, he has recently been working for BBC Radio 5, moving around press boxes offering smiles and pleasantries to journalists to whom he has previously denied interviews.

Now Radio 5 has sacked him, somewhat gutlessly since only the details of the case are new. The surprise was that they employed him at all. It seems he must wait for a new job until July and the end of his one-year ban, when he will doubtlessly be welcomed back by some club in need of rescue. Forgiveness would come sooner if Graham appeared to understand the effect of what he has done wrong.

Since the Graham case last February, the "bungs inquiry" team of Rick Parry, Steve Coppell and Robert Reid QC has not reported on any case, including that of Venables, Tottenham and Sheringham. It is surely not that they lack the will, but more probably the time and expertise to investigate as thoroughly as they would wish.

After a week in which nine clubs have paid millions owed to the Inland Revenue, which guaranteed not to name them, the time is fast approaching when football will find it impossible to resist the MP Kate Hoey's call for an inquiry into the game's ethics.