Compiled by MARY HANNIGAN

Alliss laments BBC’s loss of pulling power as ‘the end of an era’

LIVE golf on the BBC is becoming a rare sight, coverage of the final two rounds of the Masters this weekend representing a third of its live coverage of the men’s game for the whole of 2012.

It still has the rights for all four days of the British Open, for now, but has lost both the BMW PGA Championship and the Scottish Open to Sky Sports in the new European Tour TV deal.

That, then, means Peter Alliss (left) is becoming a rarely heard voice on the BBC, and he was suitably wistful about the whole business when he spoke this week about the corporation’s ever dwindling number of live tournaments.

“It’s sad. It’s the end of an era,” he told the London Independent. “The racing has gone, the Formula One has gone and yet we still have things like the Boat Race. It’s very hard to compete with someone who has seemingly unlimited funds,” he said of Sky. “It’s like playing poker with someone who has millions when you only have hundreds.”

The 82-year-old will, though, be on commentary duty at Augusta, where he will, no doubt, share his oft crotchety views on the state of the game and its main players.

Like, of course, Tiger Woods. His view on him working with a (relatively) new coach, Sean Foley?

“How can you be the greatest player in the world for 12 years and then have lessons on how to swing again? I just don’t understand. It’s like Pavarotti deciding he is going to sing baritone. It is bloody ridiculous.”

Mind you, should Tiger prevail tomorrow, Foley will be entitled to wink at Alliss, in a “music to my ears” kind of way.

Only a mother could love him . . . as remarks push Melbourne to act

IF MELBOURNE Football Club hoped for a period of quiet to mourn the loss of their beloved Jim Stynes, then Ben Polis, chief executive of EnergyWatch, ensured during the week that wasn’t going to happen.

As president of the Demons, Stynes had helped wipe out the club’s debt in 2010, going from being over A$5 million (€4m) in the red to having an asset base of over A$6 million (€4.8m) this year, according to CEO Cameron Schwab. They have, though, struggled to attract sponsors this season, which made its contract with EnergyWatch invaluable, the company in year one of a A$6 million, three-year deal with the club.

All of which makes Melbourne’s decision to end its relationship with EnergyWatch, its only major sponsor, a highly costly one. Schwab, though, insisted they were left with no choice after Polis chose to share his rather colourful views on Facebook about, to name but a few groups, Aborigines, Asians, Muslims, Jews and women. There was barely anyone left out.

It wasn’t the first time he’d used Facebook to share his opinions, last year offering this comment on the situation in Libya: “I wanna come!!! Let me FLY A MOTHER F***ER JET AND TAKE OUT SOME AFRICANS.”

And his feelings for his own employees? Well . . . “Some days if you gave me a gun I would open fire and shoot half of the muppets in my office . . . followed by a few shots at their offspring.”

This time, though, he even picked on Prime Minister Julia Gillard, calling her “a peasant”, but reserved much of his spleen for Aborigines, particularly Melbourne player Liam Jurrah, who was arrested last month over a machete attack, the latest episode in a feud that began when a childhood friend of Jurrah was murdered in 2010.

So, the 30-year-old posted a doctored photo of Jurrah holding a machete and proceeded to make a number of remarks about the player, among them the suggestion that his tattoos were, in fact, “ring worm”.

“Clearly, the comments are so far outside of the expectations and values of our club and of our game, and obviously in the context of the players who play for our club, the club had no choice but to make the decision that we’ve actually made,” said Schwab.

Schwab had already been dealing with the uproar that followed since discredited allegations against club coach Mark Neeld, who was accused in anonymous leaks of treating his indigenous players differently to the rest of his squad, addressing them only as a group rather than individually as he did with his “non-indigenous” players.

Polis’ intervention, then, was just about the last thing the club needed, but it hasn’t helped EnergyWatch much either, a number of companies cutting their ties, forcing Polis to step down as CEO and agree to sell his stake in the firm.

Super Rugby club Melbourne Rebels and A-League football club Melbourne Victory have also ended their relationship with the company, Victory’s sponsorship deal worth $400,000-a-year. (€316,000). “Melbourne Victory views Mr Polis’ comments as totally unacceptable and believes it was left with no choice but to terminate the existing agreement,” they said in a statement. “The club is proud of its multi-cultural supporter base, engagement with eclectic segments of the community and fostering of equal opportunity within football and would never compromise this.”

EnergyWatch co-founder Luke Zombor, meanwhile, condemned Polis’ remarks, but admitted to being “concerned about his health”, although the man himself sounded in reasonable fettle when he spoke to the media, while conceding he might have gone a little too far. “These were jokes between friends,” he told Australian Associated Press. “Have they been taken out of context? Yes. Did I say them? 100 per cent. But I’m not a racist person. Was there any hatred or hurt behind them? No there wasn’t. I’m not like a neo-Nazi racist is what I’m trying to say.”

He did, though, apologise for his remarks, and urged the clubs to reverse their decisions.

“The reality is these are comments made by Ben Polis,” he said. “They’re not comments made by EnergyWatch.”

He saved his most, well, passionate defence of himself for the Sydney Morning Herald, insisting he couldn’t possibly be racist because he once dated “a half-Aboriginal woman”.

And? How on earth could he be prejudiced – his “cleaner is Asian”.

Strewth.

The name of Polis’ autobiography is Only a Mother Could Love Him.

After this, even her affection for her son might be at breaking point.

Crazy journeys to play ball

WHEN YOU’RE a promising 14-year-old basketball player maybe the last thing you need is for your face to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated accompanied by the caption: “Is she the next Michael Jordan?”

No pressure.

But Seimone Augustus coped well enough, the American still earning a good living from the game 13 years later.

It’s been a wacky journey, though, for the native of Louisiana. After being the number pick in the 2006 WNBA draft, joining Minnesota Lynx, Augustus has travelled back and forth between America and Europe to augment her salary, the maximum wage in the WNBA $103,500.

She has had spells with two Russian and two Turkish clubs in the WNBA off-season, and is currently playing with Spartak Moscow, where players can earn four times as much as they would in America.

But two years ago the club’s owner Shabtai von Kalmanovic was murdered in Moscow, bringing to an end what had been a colourful life, one that featured a spell in jail in Israel when he was found guilty of spying for the KGB, as well concert promotions that brought Michael Jackson, Tom Jones and Liza Minnelli to Russia.

Von Kalmanovic’s first passion, though, was women’s basketball, and it was he who funded Spartak Moscow, to the tune of millions, and their ambitious importing of Augustus and other leading foreign players.

And when they arrived he treated them like royalty, not only paying them handsome salaries but bankrolling trips to Dubai, where he bought them diamonds, and shopping sprees in Paris.

His death, then, appeared to signal the end of the party, but his widow Anna, a former basketball player, has tried to keep the project going, and this week announced that the club was extending the contracts of Augustus and fellow American Candice Dupree for another season – news that would have come as a relief, and maybe a surprise, to the pair.

Still, “the next Michael Jordan” hopes one day that such crazy journeys won’t be necessary for the stars of the WNBA.

“At some point we might have kids, we might have a daughter that wants to play ball one day,” she told Public Radio International, “and I hope that she doesn’t have to go through what we have go through as far as coming overseas. Hopefully we can make enough money in the States and stay home, because it really is hard to have to leave your family. Yes it’s the money because our careers are so short we want to generate as much money as we can, but also it’s about the next generation.”

Public Radio International has a feature on Spartak Moscow and its American recruits on its website ( theworld.org), as does the BBC site in its "US and Canada" section.

Protesters not cock a hoop

PROTESTERS opposed to the construction of an Olympic basketball training facility in London parkland were the subject of a restraining order during the week when a High Court judge issued an injunction against their efforts to delay work at the site in Waltham Forest.

The Olympic Delivery Authority sought an “urgent injunction”, alleging that the protesters, who have set up camp at the site, had “harassed and threatened” construction workers and they feared the centre would not be complete in time for the Games.

Mr Justice Arnold rule in the ODA’s favour, issuing an injunction “restraining unlawful activity” by the protesters.

Coincidentally, he’s a bit of a hoops fan: “As it happens I do have tickets for one of the basketball matches,” he revealed in court.

The chief reason for the judge agreeing to the ODA’s application was that planning permission had been granted in the first place on the basis that the centre would be demolished and land restored to its previous condition once the Olympic show leaves town.

And with that, those in Britain who object to what they perceive as the waste of much-needed money on Games’ projects poured themselves another stiff whiskey.

And then another.

Swiss mountain dog shows his taste for Masters fare

HOW MANY times did the dog eat your homework?

Too many to count?

But how many times did he eat your tickets for the Masters?

Rarely, presumably?

So, the people in the Masters ticket office were, you’d imagine, a touch dubious when Russ Berkman of Seattle contacted them to tell them that Sierra, his Swiss mountain dog, had eaten his four tickets for the tournament’s final practice day, to which he was about to jet off.

When he returned from a last-minute shopping trip he found the string from the tickets on the floor, with a slightly guilty looking Sierra licking his lips.

“Not knowing what to do next, Berkman called his girlfriend, who was at a triathlon in Hawaii,” ESPN reported. “And she says, ‘well, you’ve got to make the dog puke’.”

Look away now if you’re squeamish.

“Berkman told (radio station) KJR that he knew veterinarians safely give hydrogen peroxide to dogs as an emetic. He did – 10 minutes later, there on his deck, among the previous contents of Sierra’s tummy, was what was left of four Masters tickets.

“I would say each ticket was in roughly 20 pieces,” said Berkman.”

At that point he phoned the Masters ticket office and told them his tale, informing them he had managed to reclaim “about 70 percent” of the four tickets. They, very kindly, agreed to issue him with new passes, amazingly not demanding that he produce the remnants of the originals as proof.