If anyone tries to tell you that there was an Olympic legacy following the 2012 London Games, don't believe them. There certainly was no such thing as far as specialist Olympic correspondents are concerned.

I was reminded of The Curse of the Olympic Corr yesterday, when The Guardian included Matthew Beard on a list of those being culled from the London Evening Standard - estimates suggest that between 14 and  20 staff must go.

Beard had long been a sports reporter, working on sports news for The Independent and then, in the run-up to 2012, as the London evening paper's Olympics editor. 

Once the Olympic circus had packed up its bags and left town, Beard was re-assigned on the news desk to handle an infrastructure brief (his contacts with the likes of London 2012 CEO Paul Deighton were well-respected), and more recently he took on the role as the Standard's transport editor. So his axing in a week of London fare rises and commuter chaos at the city's railway terminals seems particularly ill-judged by his former management.

Beard had good reason to think that by moving into non-sports news after the Olympics, he'd manage to prolong his career. But the Curse of the Olympic Corr seems to stretch very far.

The job of the sports news correspondent -  which for many  metamorphosed into Olympics reporter in 2005 when London won its bid to host the Games - ought to be a key role within any news organisation, providing a link between sports and news desks for those stories which transfer from back to front pages. Ched Evans and the clusterfuck that the Professional Footballers' Association's Gordon Taylor created this week being a case in point.
whether sports news corrs have ever achieved that objective is a moot point - and something for another day, perhaps.

Whether sports news corrs have ever achieved that objective is a moot point (something for another day, perhaps). But what has happened in the past 18 months to Fleet Street's Olympic correspondents and others with similar and related roles has been extraordinary.

Below is just an off-the-top-of-the-head list, and I apologise in advance to anyone I may have omitted or who is gamely still in there, slugging away at their job. Do post a comment to advise of others who might be added. 

The number of decent, competent and even award-winning journalists who appear to have been discarded, rather than redeployed by their employers, is an astonishing indictment of the state of our business.

Matthew Beard, Evening Standard. As above
Jacquelin Magnay, Telegraph. Was woefully under-utilised by the paper, possibly the result of being appointed by one head of sport (David Bond, see below) and not to the taste of his successor. Magnay been recruited from Australia, where she had been winning awards for hard-edged journalism from before the 2000 Sydney Games. Now working as a London correspondent for range of Aussie outlets.
Paul Kelso, Telegraph. Was the paper's chief sports reporter until 2013. Now working as sports correspondent at Sky News. Some may regard this as career progress.
Robin Ellis-Scott, Independent. One of a round of job cuts made by the paper since 2012.
Colin Bateman, Express. At his 60th birthday last year, took retirement, after 35 years working at Standard and then Express, including as cricket correspondent. Had taken on Olympic gig as final career challenge, and worked through to last February's Sochi Winter Games. Has now left journalism.
Ashling O'Connor, The Times. Had been recruited from FT specifically to do sports and Olympic news. Did some freelancing for the Indy post-Olympics, but has now left journalism to work for the Inzito Partnership. 
David Bond, BBC. Was the BBC's sports editor, having been recruited when Telegraph's sports editor. Has now left journalism to work in PR.
Malcolm Folley, Mail on Sunday. Long-standing features writer, specialising in tennis but also a veteran of many Olympics. Retired last year soon after covering the Sochi Winter Games. Had plans to write some sports biographies.
Jonathan McEvoy, Daily Mail. Took on the Mail's athletics and Olympic briefs before the London Games, where he acquired reputation for hard-nosed approach - getting banned by UK Athletics for asking US-based team captain to sing God Save the Queen has got to deserve a gold star. Once the London Olympics were over, swiftly moved back to covering F1 at the Mail.
Adrian Warner, BBC London. Former Reuters and Standard sports news specialist with very strong sports politics contacts, was made redundant by regional BBC last year, despite having taken on a broader sports brief. Has now left journalism.
Ian Chadband, Telegraph. Sports feature writer with extensive Olympic sport contacts, one of the victims of last year's round of redundancies at Victoria.
Simon Hart, Telegraph. Former deputy sports editor on Sunday Telegraph, had been Telegraph's athletics correspondent for almost a decade. Has now left journalism.

There is an association for specialist Olympic correspondents. Can't help but think they'll notice a drop in their subscription income this year...

Lee Clayton, David Walker and Matt Gatward, respectively the head of sport at the Mail group, the Daily Mirror's new sports editor, and the sports editor of The Independent, have some big decisions to make.

Clayton, especially, looks to have his work cut out, following the news that Les Snowdon, his trusty No2 as the Daily Mail's sports editor, is to leave Derry Street to take up a new job as Scottish editor for The Times.


The Mail is one of the last bastions of an old-style sports desk, with plenty of reporters and production staff to manage, as well as to try to break the occasional story, all operating these days alongside the click-bait team working on Mail Online's sports coverage.

Snowdon has worked in Scotland before, having been editor of the Scottish sports coverage for the Sunday Times and as well being the editor of Scotland on Sunday before joining the Mail five years ago.

Clayton is also losing from his staff Mark Alford, who has undertaken various roles on sport, on the paper and online, since being signed up as a sub after completing the Mail's graduate trainee scheme a decade ago. Very much a Clayton protoge, Alford may not necessarily be replaced - his latest job title is "consultant sports editor" for Mail Online.

Both Snowdon and Alford are due to begin new jobs in January, Alford, according to a report on the website of the Sports Journalists' Association, moving to Sky Sports at Osterley as head of digital media.

Elsewhere in the same building off Kensington High Street, Gatward is attempting to re-build after the whirlwind interregnum under Mike Dunn (as we reported here).

With Neil Robinson, the former head of sport for The Independent, Independent on Sunday, i and the Evening Standard, having been sidelined to a night editor's role to make way when Dunn was appointed, it has been left to Gatward to pick up the pieces of the spendthrift three months when the Indy titles suddenly started pretending that they had the budget of The Sun sports desk.

The spending - on the likes of 600-quid-a-time football columnists such as Terry Venables, or the six-figure deal for Paul Scholes - is now being recouped through drastic cuts to the papers' already slender budgets for casual subs and reporters' travel.

Dunn arrived accompanied by his former buddy from The Sun and News of the World, Tim Allan; Allan was only ever on a short-term deal, and he is understood to be among the applicants for the role of "sports editorial executive" - effectively sports editor of the IoS and the i. Interviews were held last week, and an appointment expected to be made any time now.

Over at Canary Wharf, and Walker has been given an early opportunity to make his mark on the Daily Mirror's sports pages.

Walker won the game of musical chairs at Trinity Mirror's titles in the summer, as he was promoted from the Sunday Mirror, while People sports editor James Brown left the building (to re-surface at The Sun).

But two key members of staff leaving in quick succession might have come as a shock so early in Walker's reign.

To lose your football corr, in Martin "Laptop" Lipton, who's been recruited as the new deputy sports editor at The Sun , and then also have your chief sports writer in Ollie Holt defect to the Mail on Sunday, where he is to be the "new Patrick Collins", might be a double blow for Walker.

Apparently not so. According to one Trinity Mirror sports desker who was in a football press box at the weekend, "David sees it as his chance to bring in or promote those people he really rates. Nothing lasts forever, and Laptop and Ollie had both been fixtures at the Mirror for a while. David can now mix things up, without having to elbow anyone aside."

Early suggestions are that Andy Dunn, a Walker favourite when he edited the Sunday Mirror's sports pages, could figure prominently.

SAVE OUR SUBS (Part 94): A hat-tip to Lee Clayton, the ever-vigilant head of sport at the Mail for flagging up the confusion caused across the nation's sports desks by Sergio Aguero's thrilling and match-winning hat-trick for Manchester City in the Champions' League match against Bayern Munich last night.

"UEFA have City third in the table... The Mail, Times, Mirror, Star, Guardian, Tele has them fourth," Clayton tweeted, followed by the hashtagged exclamation "#huh?"

There's an important rider: Clayton also suggested that the overworked subs on the Express sports desk have City in second place in UEFA's qualifying group, with one crucial game to play to determine who goes into the lucrative knock-out stages in the new year. 

Maybe Clayton was looking at a different edition, because in the copy of the paper I bought in London this morning, the hard-pressed Express sports desk appears to be the only national paper which has reproduced the Group E table to match the European football governing body. Not that that is an guarantee of being correct... 

In truth, in any normal reading of a football table, in which three teams have exactly the same playing record and the same number of points, the usual way to determine the sides' position in the group or league would be goal difference - goals scored, minus goals conceded. 

In this case, that would put City in second place.

City - thanks largely to Aguero - have scored 7 and conceded 8, and so have a goal difference of -1, ahead of the -4s of Roma and Moscow, with the Italian club adjudged to have the advantage of the Russian club by virtue have having scored two goals more.

But this is a competition organised by the Swiss-based gnomes of European football, and so "normal" does not apply. 

UEFA's own website, which has City in third with just one game to play, in Rome next month, has the weasel word cop-out, "Standings are provisional until all group matches have been played", which is all fine and dandy for them, but is no bloody good for a sports desk sub on deadline in London on a Tuesday night.

And according to UEFA's own competition rules, the table on their website (and therefore in the Express) is incorrect.

The reason for the UEFA rider is that in the Champions' League, they have decided to make head-to-head records in the home-and-away round-robin matches the deciding factor.

With a place in the last 16 worth around £20 million to each of the successful clubs, these distinctions matter.

Nick Harris, who covers sports news (bribes 'n drugs) for the Mail on Sunday as well as running the ever-excellent  sportingintelligence.com website is a bit of an anorak in these respects, and he has highlighted how the H2H records take precedence, and therefore ought to see City at the foot of the group table.

Pity the poor sports subs, eh?

For anyone with the time and inclination to try to work out how this all works (not that it will matter by the time of the final whistle in Stadio Olimpico), the Mail has had a bash at explaining it all here.  

And in the meantime, I - probably backed by the Express - am about to start a campaign called "Bring Back Sir Stanley Rous!"

Perhaps the irony was intended.

When ESPN issued a press release to announce the signing of Simon Barnes, they accompanied it with a picture of their new star columnist in his bird-watching mode, as you can see, right.

In seeking some logical explanation for The Times to allow one of its most prized journalistic assets to leave the paper, some had suggested that chief sports writer Barnes, when indulging his other interest in his weekly twitcher columns, had managed to displease some of the land-owners who read The Thunderer through his complaints and criticism of the deliberate poisoning of hen harriers in or near some of northern England's shooting estates.

This attempted explanation for the otherwise inexplicable was described to me by one Times sports desker as "utter bollocks".

Nearer the truth was the version that Barnes himself put out there: the paper's creaking budgets could not afford him any longer. One of his former sports editors, Tom Clarke, described the decision as "a stunning mistake".

Barnes's re-emergence with ESPN.co.uk is surely another sign of the direction of travel of our business. The web presence of the US-based cable sports channel has specialist cricket (through Cricinfo), rugby (scrum.com) and F1 sites, as well as football sites which have resources at their disposal which the sports editors of our struggling national titles can only dream about.

When his signing was announced, Barnes said, “You can watch sport through the narrow window of patriotism but you miss the half the sport and all the point. I’m delighted to have the chance to write on a global platform about sport that belongs to the world.”

Whatever, Barnes's departure from The Times might turn out to be one of the best moves of his lengthy career. For Barnes, 62, has this week also landed himself an undoubtedly lucrative gig, writing on nature matters for the Daily Mail.

Maybe Tom Clarke was right.

Matt Lawton, take a bow son.

The Daily Mail’s chief sport reporter, pictured left, has set the pace this week with some good, old-fashioned reporting on the strange goings on at Cardiff City and the behaviour of Malky Mackay, their one-time promotion-winning manager, and his mate and former colleague, Iain Moody.

From an initial, supremely well-sourced exclusive – the Mail’s lawyers must have loved it – Lawton’s story has had the rest of the football press pack chasing for fresh follow-ups. The often blundering football establishment has done its best to provide some.

Since Lawton’s report first appeared, it has…  

• stopped in its tracks the hiring of Mackay as the new manager of Crystal Palace
  
• brought about yesterday the resignation of Moody as Palace’s “sporting director” (a title in which the word “sporting” is assumed not to have been adopted ironically)
  
• prompted one of the most ridiculous “justifications” for racism, sexism and homophobia as “banter” in a statement which was supposed to be an apology issued on behalf of Mackay from the League Managers’ Association
  
• and seen the aforesaid LMA this morning issue an apology for its apology of an apology. It is not impossible that further shame-faced resignations may follow
  

A quick catch-up of how we got to this point.

Mackay was the manager who got Cardiff into the Premier League for the first time in May 2013. Mackay worked closely with Moody, as the club’s executive in charge of transfers and recruitment, and last summer they spent around £50 million on the transfer of eight players, a significant spend for a newly promoted club.

Yet within months of promotion, Cardiff’s Malaysian owner, Vincent Tan, had fired Moody and then Mackay. There was much acrimony, but little clarity. Tan – the foreign billionaire that had ordered the Bluebirds to play in red – was widely derided for his apparent misjudgement. From holding a reasonable position in the Premier League under Mackay, Cardiff were relegated at the end of the season.

Moody soon got himself another job, as sporting director at another newly promoted Premier League club, Crystal Palace, where Tony Pulis had been appointed manager in November. 

Palace played at Cardiff in April, winning 3-0, a result which precipitated a final spiral in the Welsh club’s form.

It was not long after that Tan alleged that, somehow, someone in the Palace staff had acquired information about Cardiff’s starting line-up for the game, potentially important (though unlikely to be crucial) information.

From just one league point in November, Pulis transformed Palace’s form through the rest of the season and saw the side haul itself to finish 11th by May, earning him the Manager of the Season accolade.

Mackay, meanwhile, remained unemployed. Together with Moody the Scot started a £7.5 million legal claim against Tan for compensation and wrongful dismissal. In May 2014, Mackay abandoned the action. “I did not want to be in litigation and believe that it is in the best interests of all parties to have a clean break and move on,” Mackay said at that time. He also apologised to Tan.

The timing of this abandonment of legal action is now seen as significant.

For Tan was spending £750,000 on an investigation into the £50 million-worth of transfer business that Mackay and Moody had conducted the previous summer. This included his lawyers, Mishcon de Reya – the firm that handled Princess Diana’s divorce from the Prince of Wales – obtaining a High Court order to search Moody’s Balham home last March. Investigators seized thousands of documents, computer and phone records, including 70,000 text messages and 100,000 emails. Moody’s office at Palace’s training ground in Beckenham was also searched.

This documentation was to form the basis of Tan’s “dossier”. 

Last week, with the new football season just 48 hours away, Palace’s hero and saviour, Pulis, walked out of his job as manager mainly because he was not allowed free-rein over the club’s transfers. This remained the domain of Moody, who sources at Selhurst Park said was “highly rated” by the club’s owners. After three months of the transfer window and with the season about to begin, Palace had managed to sign just three players, spending less than £2.5 million.

This week, the Football Association ruled that it had found evidence that someone at Palace had sneakily got hold of Cardiff’s team sheet ahead of that game in April, and it handed down a modest and seemingly insignificant £25,000 fine to the south London club.

But once that point of fact had been established, it prompted Tan to launch a law suit against Crystal Palace for £20 million compensation for loss of earnings.

That case may struggle to be made. Cardiff finished the season 20th and last in the division, six points adrift of safety, having lost 22 of their 38 matches. 

There must be a Malaysian version of the dictum about cold servings of dishes of revenge. Because with Palace poised to sign a three-year contract with Mackay to be their new manager, re-uniting him with his mate Moody and given a transfer war chest worth around £25 million, details from the dossier of text messages exchanged between the pair from the time they worked together at Cardiff were plastered across the back pages, originally courtesy of Lawton.

The sexist, racist and homophobic text messages may just be the start. Cardiff have reported Moody and Mackay to the FA for alleged misconduct. 

The financial details of the transfer deals may yet take us back to an earlier age of football skulduggery, with Tan reckoning he paid at least £20 million over the odds for the players Moody and Mackay lined up. 

Not since Terry Venables and Alan Sugar fell-out in acrimony over the ownership and management of Tottenham Hotspur 20 years ago have the often tawdry insider dealings of a top-flight football club been so exposed in the pages of our newspapers.

On that occasion, the owner, Sugar, “won” the war of words; despite Venables being very popular among his many friends in the football press corps, as a regular “Friday night drop” of documents to one Sunday newspaper reporter kept the drip-drip of negative stories going, eroding Venables’s position in public.

Of course, Venables went on to manage England soon after he left Spurs. Mackay may not have such career opportunities ahead of him after the coverage he’s had in the Mail this week.