OVER 208,000 turned out last weekend to watch the Big Four.

I won’t call them footballing folk because many will have been there more for the prawn sandwiches than the purity of the game.

The figure though is significant at a time when many are suggesting the Premier League has lost its glitz due to predictability.

At half-time the VIPs would have been choking on their corporate cuisine.

Arsenal 0 Everton 1, Liverpool 1 Wigan 2 and Man Utd 0 West Brom 0.

Only Middlesbrough 0 Chelsea 1 was going the way it was supposed to.

Yet 45 minutes later normality had been restored as we surely knew it would be with all the upstarts having been put in their place.

Were it not for Hull City’s amazing start to life among the elite the Premier League table would bear an all-too familiar look.

Chelsea are top and playing sumptuously under the Brazilian influence of Scolari, Liverpool are clinging to their shirt tails by dint of late comebacks, while Arsenal and Manchester United are hovering menacingly.

Personally I prefer the vagaries of the Championship which, in all probability, won’t have any issues resolved until the last weekend of the season, but I cannot deny the Premiership is still a magnet for the majority.

Over 75,000 worshipped at the feet of Rooney, over 60,000 were enticed by boy wonder Walcott; so the infatuation with football is far from over.

Around a quarter of a million attended Championship matches and even in the lower leagues Town, Bradford and Millwall all attracted five-figure gates.

That tells me that fans will turn up no matter who’s in the team. They support a club not an individual.

I merely make this point in answer to Rafa Benitez, who claims that the demands on players are excessive.

His outburst over Fernando Torres returning from Spain with an injury for the third time was totally unwarranted.

Torres can just as easily get injured at Anfield. Every footballer has a right to represent his birthland and he certainly plays 10 times more games for club than country.

I do think clubs should be compensated when players get injured playing for someone else, but to say they are overworked is ridiculous.

SACHIN TENDULKAR has never complained about representing his country.

He’s done it hundreds of times and never once put a foot wrong.

I was delighted when he broke Brian Lara’s world record number of runs in Test matches, and to surpass the likes of Lara, Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, and fellow countryman Sunil Gavaskar has been a wondrous feat.

More importantly, Sachin is a wonderful ambassador and role model and a total credit to his sport.

I had dealings with him when he became Yorkshire’s first overseas player and he was never less than a gentleman – in India they’d call him a God.

To score more than 12,000 runs is incredible but the Little Master has always been destined for greatness.

The story goes that Bradman didn’t like watching cricket on television, but his wife did. The first time she saw Sachin on the box she shouted: “You’d better come and watch this Don. I think you might have a rival.”

Prophetic words indeed.

There are some in India urging the new world record holder to retire, but I reckon he’ll go on amassing as many runs as he wants until his appetite for the game disappears, which hopefully will be a long way away.

I’M off to New Zealand today. Yippee. Can’t wait.

It’s a country I’ve not been to for 34 years, since the Commonwealth Games were held in Christchurch – which turned out to be one of the most memorable trips of my life.

No Commonwealth Games this time. It’s the Women’s Under 17 football World Cup, so hopefully I’ll be able to tell you a little bit more about it this time next week.

Bring on the kiwi fruit.