Only time can break strongest of moral codes

A groundbreaking week, in many ways, as we have Joey Barton to thank for defining, at long last, the morality of sport.

First, to an unpleasant matter in Boise, Idaho, which might best illustrate what Joey is getting at.

Four ice hockey fans have sued the CenturyLink Arena, home of the Idaho Steelheads, after careful experiments showed that a $7 large beer — served in an eye-catching vessel of some girth — contained the same amount of beer as the arena’s slimline $4 glass.

When ‘Pourgate’ went viral on YouTube, arena president Eric Trapp held his hands up in a manner that will be familiar to followers of scandals in this fair land. He blamed the glasses.

“Unfortunately, the volume of the 20-ounce cup fits into the volume of the 16-ounce cup. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that.”

How could they have known?

So we come to Joey, who had words of comfort for Trapp as he treated the students of Oxford University to his philosophical musings. We once looked to Joey to see what a man should do when he felt slightly out of his depth on foreign shores. Now, since Paxman gave the go-ahead, we look to him for everything.

“There’s no right and wrong decisions,” Joey assured Britain’s finest young minds. “You just make a decision and time gives you the right and wrong.”

By way of illustration, Joey talked about the decisions he made to elbow Carlos Tevez, kick Sergio Aguero and stick the nut into Vincent Kompany during the final game of the 2011-12 Premier League season.

Joey admits, in this case, time quickly showed he made the wrong call, since he was red-carded and banned and didn’t manage to provoke any Man City players into joining him in an early bath.

Maybe the lads at CenturyLink slipped up too, when they ordered the glasses. But until time caught up with them, they sold beer at three bucks over the odds.

Joey’s is a moral code some less sophisticated thinkers struggle with when they look, for example, at Arjen Robben stretched out on the grass and a referee pointing to the spot.

But it is not the swings and roundabouts of Arjen’s decision-making they should be railing at. It is time that lets them down.

They have long been on Joey’s wavelength in Formula 1, where most of them have always known that time is the only judge.

They have made a few wrong decisions over the years; the little bit of espionage, the odd bit of trickery with the mechanics; the occasional blatant crash into your rival’s car. But they have made many fine decisions too in the areas of espionage, trickery and crashing.

Around this time last year, when Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber disagreed over who should win the Malaysian Grand Prix, the sport’s inspirational supremo Bernie Ecclestone blithely described how he dealt with an uncooperative employee when he was boss of Brabham. “We just made sure he didn’t have enough fuel in the car to finish the race.”

Time proved Bernie right on that and many other dubious moves, although time has one more trick up its sleeve when his bribery trial commences in Munich.

In the meantime, they are back on the grid in Melbourne tomorrow morning for another campaign.

With interest dwindling, the sport that flies thousands of people and dozens of machines around the world every year has rebooted itself to ‘go green’. New rules on fuel and engines and aerodynamics should, temporarily at least, clip Red Bull’s wings.

They will fly to Russia, later in the year, to build more interest. If parts of football are reluctant to embrace the Barton moral code, Bernie has another role model who doesn’t judge himself too harshly.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Mr Putin. He’s strong enough to not take a lot of nonsense from people. He does what he thinks is the right thing to do. He gets on with it.”

Much like Trapp; Joey, Arjen, Bernie and Vlad are all glass half-full kinda guys. Will time ever catch up with them?

Bum Bendtner abuses the soft approach

The decision to slate your own players is always fraught with risk, and time may well bring swift judgment on Tim Sherwood’s move to do so at Spurs.

Mind you, events of the past week highlight that more conciliatory man-management doesn’t always bring rewards either.

It is almost five years since an Arsenal Champions League exit last coincided with a story about Nicklas Bendtner’s trousers at half mast. When, after the 2009 semi-final defeat by Manchester United, the big Dane stumbled out of a nightclub, strides around his ankles, Arsene Wenger gamely defended his man. “He did not put his trousers down, somebody did it for him and somebody was posted there with a camera.”

Later that year, Wenger gave him a five-year contract, during which, the highlight of Bendtner’s career has probably been his decision to drop his shorts after scoring for Denmark in Euro 2012.

This week, as Arsenal bowed out in Munich; Bendtner was back home in Copenhagen, where a taxi-driver insists the occasional striker defrocked again and whipped his car with his belt. Arsene might well be thinking now he could have come down harder early doors on Bendtner’s exhibitionism. He must also regret striking that bum deal.

Sanction to suit Nick down to a tee

It’s been quite a week in sporting litigation.

We have seen footage, on occasion, of professional golfers showcasing their talents from particularly tricky tee positions; such as the popular YouTube video of John Daly driving out of fan’s mouth in a Nashville car park last year — itself a replica of Daly’s stunt from 2012, when he hit the ball off a tee stuck between David Feherty’s teeth.

You sensed, at the time, this kind of thing would eventually end in tears. And sure enough, details emerged this week of a complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by model Liz Dickson against Playboy Enterprises for an alleged botched stunt involving an attempted shot that had been teed up on her backside.

Dickson claims that Playboy TV presenter Kevin Klein badly misjudged his lie and seeks $500,000 and punitive damages for “pain, suffering, worrying and anxiety as a result of her injuries”.

Sounds like an unfortunate business for sure. But, at the same time, with the first Danish event on the European Tour scheduled this August, might we have hit upon the perfect punishment for Bendtner?