IF THERE is a more worthless catalogue on the planet than Deloitte’s football rich list can someone please tell me.

Okay, no cheating out there and sending me shopping lists that you have just made up to include dubbin, broken glass and left-handed doorknobs, but really how can this annual breakdown of who gets what even be considered as a ‘rich’ list?

Manchester United have apparently dropped to third place and Liverpool are seventh, but are seemingly still well up in the rankings in Europe when it comes to being ‘rich’ in football terms – yet you get the impression their fans don’t feel that well off.

And it is the ‘terms’ that I have a problem with.

The Deloitte rankings are based on how much income the major clubs in Europe generate, but surely that doesn’t actually equate to how ‘rich’ they are.

Portsmouth no doubt fetch in a fair few quid having been a Premier League side for a number of seasons and having won the FA Cup, but I would say that any Sunday League football team whose matchday subs add up to more than their out-goings on pitch rental and kit washing bills are arguably more ‘rich’ than Pompey currently seem to be.

To put it simply, if you bring in a trillion-billion-gazillion euros/pounds you really still aren’t that rich if your out-goings are a trillion-billion-gazillion euros/pounds and one penny.

Liverpool are so rich that they bring in 217m euros per annum at the moment according to Deloitte – yet they reportedly owe £237m to the Royal Bank of Scotland. I don’t know the current currency exchange rate but somehow the maths look fairly straight-forward to me.

United fetch in 327m euros yet they have stands at Old Trafford filled with people who are ‘making a point’ by disguising themselves as Norwich City supporters.

So upset are some United fans by the running of their club by the Glazer family that they have taken to wearing the colours of their original manifestation Newton Heath FC – apparently paying ever higher prices (I’m told the scarves started at a fiver four weeks ago and are now at least a tenner, though this information came from a City fan) for the green and gold wraps each week just to prove that some people are easily parted from their money.

Where were these so-called activists when the real fans of the club – the red rebels of 2005 – saw what was coming and set up FC United of Manchester. Oh I remember they were handing over ridiculous amounts of money for season tickets to their new American benefactors.

While in my dreams I would love to see United suffer a huge financial disaster and be relegated to a status lower than FC United of Manchester, I do feel a little bit of sympathy for those who are backing the ‘green and gold until the club’s sold’ catchphrase because they have finally realised that in the real world the club they care for could be in serious trouble rather than buying into Deloitte’s world where they are still shockingly rich and the end of every story is as up-lifting as all the denouements in Disney’s film output.

Lucky for United that Newton Heath’s colours were green and gold on the rhyming front.

City could never do the same as their original incarnation West Gorton wore black with a white cross and I can’t see the catchphrase ‘black and white until we stop being ...’ ever really catching on.

Anyway next year the club from the Wastelands may well be deemed to be the richest footballing entity in Europe thanks to middle east investment and the huge savings they have made on Duraglit having not acquired any silverware since 1976.

ROLF HARRIS, Dame Edna Everage, Shane Warne, Mal Meninga, Ricky Ponting ... yeah Punter are you listening? Your boys took one hell of a beating!

There is just something about England (and for that matter Great Britain) victories over Australia in just about any sport that brings out the unbridled patriot in me.

But the one at the weekend was just really very special.

On the biggest stage in a World Cup game the final scoreline was England 3 Australia 2.

What do you mean what am I on about? Surely you must be following every push, flick, aerial and short corner from hockey’s big showdown in India!

It has been 25 years since we turned over the green and gold on a hockey field and every last member of the England squad – plus all the backroom staff – should be up for OBEs at the very least.

The rugby union boys and the Ashes winners got gongs, so why not the lads armed with sticks?

By the way this is no passing fad on my part.

The last time we beat the Aussies I was still active on the hockey fields of England and my paltry collection of sporting trophies and medals is made up almost entirely from my few achievementswielding a Grays Karachi King during a small number of successful seasons on the playing fields of East Anglia (I won nothing at all playing in Yorkshire).

I gave up the game nearly 20 years ago, and some former teammates would say it was longer ago than that having spent the final few seasons concentrating on my real strengths of standing and pointing while being by-passed in midfield.

It seems hard now to think that once I could control and/or hit a ball with a narrow stick – when the ball would arrive from any old odd angle – with relative ease.

It was the same then and is now that if I am armed with a cricket bat I am still struggling to ensure contact with the ball despite the fact the piece of wood I am wielding is much wider and you have a pretty good idea that the trajectory of said ball will be generally in your direction.

It is a constant source of frustration to me and of mirth to my Carson’s Builders CC colleagues, who if my mobile ever went off in the pavilion would answer it with: “He has just gone out to bat, can you hold on a minute?”

But, along with the Ashes victory last summer, our hockey success just makes me glow with pride.

Now where was I ... oh yes Wally Lewis, Allan Border, David Campese ...