The eternal battle between good and evil moved to a junior football pitch in Southam last weekend.
The forces of darkness have the upper hand for the time being, if the result is anything to go by.
Southam United Devils beat Christ The King Rovers 5-0.

A week is supposed to be a long time in politics, but in football it can seem to pass in the blink of an eye.

Last Friday the Courier asked: “What is going on at Brakes?”  The answer couldn’t have been swifter - or more clear.

Jason Cadden’s team, which looks like developing into the best side seen in the town since the mid-1980s, thrashed Marlow 7-2 to go top of Southern League Division One Midlands.

Then the board issued a statement containing several items of positive news as well as setting out their future plans and philosophy in some detail. It made good reading.

The departure of David Hucker left some people feeling upset on a personal level, while others were concerned about its possible effects on the future direction of the club.

Those in the former camp will have to make their peace as they see fit. But anyone with worries about continuity and future plans should already be feeling much happier.

The search for two new directors goes on, but the appointment of BPS managing director John Dibble as a business consultant to the club is a smart one. Mr Dibble has ploughed many thousands of pounds into the club through his company’s sponsorship. He is a genuine supporter as well as an experienced business head.

It’s worth quoting the club’s statement on this: “Following on from the recent appointment of director Harvey Hunt, managing director of ACS Building and Maintenance Ltd, the board of directors firmly believes their appointment has significantly strengthened the level of business skills within the club.”

Just in case we hadn’t got the message, it added: “With two vacant posts to fill, there is an opportunity to recruit individuals who have the skills, ability and energy to assist the current team drive towards an increasingly business-minded era.”

Such planning is plainly of great importance. So is communication - this is what the fans wanted to hear.
The club was understandably upset that some of the issues surrounding the recent boardroom upheaval reached the public domain.

Most of the time such things don’t make it into the pages of my paper. Neither should they.

People who give up their free time to work hard for clubs like Leamington don’t deserve the kind of public scrutiny with which our politicians and some business leaders are wearily familiar.

But there was a lot of talk and concern among a sizeable section of the club’s support about what was happening and it was not possible to ignore that.

All the right noises have now been made. The club statement was headed “Moving forward”. Hopefully everyone will be happy to do just that.

When Mark Hughes turned up for work on Monday morning he probably wasn’t expecting an oil sheikh to say: “I want you to sign one of the biggest stars in world football by the end of the day”.

Dimitar Berbatov must have had a bit of a surprise too. While Sir Alex Ferguson was busy showing him around Old Trafford word came through that City were trying to snatch the Bulgarian from under United’s nose for £34 million.

Then there’s Robinho, who may well never have even have heard of the blue mob until his agent got on the phone at the last minute. The stadium people are already calling Middle Eastlands is going to be an interesting place this season, even by Manchester City’s eccentric standards.

First a former Thai prime minister with frozen assets and an arrest warrant on corruption charges, now an Arab who is being called “the Donald Trump of Abu Dhabi” and is supposedly even richer than Roman Abramovich.

The latest twists and turns at Newcastle United, a club all too often guilty of rivalling Manchester City as England’s most comical top-flight club, are dull by comparison.

How calm things have seemed at the New Windmill, where the new season has got off to a flying start.
Four Southern League wins and another in the FA Cup suggest all is well down Harbury Lane.

This is not the case, as the departure from the board of David Hucker proves.

Fans were given no explanation when he was ousted as chairman  and replaced by Jim Scott last month.
He was expected to leave the board at the end of the month but was instead pushed out this week.

No one is saying why.

What is clear is that Mr Hucker is worried - worried about the future of the club he helped save.
It’s not hard to sympathise.

Saturday’s match report from beaten FA Cup opponents Staveley referred to Brakes as: “[a club] whose committee members’ mission statement was described yesterday as ‘we are aiming for Conference North or South Football here in the next three or four years’.”

If, as seems likely, this came from the Brakes boardroom, it’s time to ring the alarm bell.
Good clubs don’t work like that.

Last season, for the first time since the re-launch in 2000, the cost of running the team exceeded gate receipts.
Despite talk of the budget not going up again this season, there’s no way it has done anything but.

Sooner or later - sooner, the ex-chairman seems to think - Brakes will find themselves with ambitions out of scale to their income.

Oil tycoons don’t know what this feels like. For anyone else it’s a very dangerous position to be in.
Whether the board has the sense not to get carried away remains to be seen.

But the fact that the man who has done so much for Leamington FC has been pushed out makes you worry about the level of judgment at the top of the club.

What a difference 19 gold medals make to the mood of the nation.

So popular has the Olympics become it’s surely safe to bring our old friend the London 2012 logo out of hiding.
Earlier this year it was challenging the Swastika as the world’s most reviled symbol. It even received the ultimate accolade - a Sun front page.

You won’t catch anyone screaming “Olympic logo triggers epilepsy” now. We’re all too busy counting down to the our stint as hosts and wondering how many more medals we can win in four years time.

Few things unite the British as much as moaning, complaining and mocking. Only now instead of running down our 2012 role we’re busy running flags up poles in giddy anticipation.

There was even one fluttering in the breeze down at Racing Club Warwick.

Everyone wants a piece of what we must apparently call ‘Team GB’. Mansfield has gone charmingly mad about Rebecca Adlington. The mayor presented our star swimmer with a pair of designer shoes and her local pub was temporarily renamed in her honour.

You need to watch out with that sort of thing though. William Hague won’t want to be reminded that he suggested renaming Heathrow ‘Diana Airport’ in those crazy days following her death.

The Scots always fight their way to the front of the queue if there’s a bit of national pride on offer.
Drunk on the success of Chris Hoy, they now want their own Olympic team.

The great man was less than impressed with all this though, saying: “I believe before any calls are made for a Scottish Olympic team, they need to address the lack of facilities, to allow Scottish athletes to compete at the highest level."

We Brits love a commemorative coin and you can already send off for a special Olympic Handover piece.
I don’t fancy handing over a tenner for something with a face value of £2, but I suppose they are silver or gold.

Mind you, I once had an Edinburgh 1986 Commonwealth Games £2 coin in the days before such things were widely available. It was legal tender though and I think I spent mine on fags when I was a feckless teenager.

This is somewhat less significant than the 2012 budget of £9.4 billion, I concede. But it’s still a warning against bad financial management and I hope Tessa Jowell takes note.

What is sport? Radio Five Live recently revived the age-old debate to consider the claims of poker, apparently an increasingly well-funded and popular activity.

As usual with phone-ins there was more heat than light. Respect to the bloke who said this though: “Anything you can do while smoking isn’t a sport, it’s a game.”

Medal winners or not, every member of Team GB put an enormous effort into their Olympic preparations.

Except Andy Murray. The cheery Scot conceded his Beijing build-up had been, well, less than perfect.

He might like to hear the story of John Thorneycroft Hartley, a Yorkshire vicar who reached the Wimbledon men’s singles semi-finals in 1879. This caused problems.

Immediately after winning his quarter-final on Saturday evening, Hartley set off for his parish, some 250 miles north.

The usual services having been conducted, he got up very early on Monday to head back to London, first by horse and carriage to Thirsk and then by rail.

The train pulled into King’s Cross at 2pm, leaving the poor vicar half an hour to race across London for his semi-final meeting with C F Parr - an opponent he had never previously beaten.

Exhausted and hungry, Hartley lost the match 0-6, 0-6, 0-6 and Parr went on to win the title.

SPORT is full of quirky tales and little-known facts - none more so than cricket.

The game lends itself to record and analysis like no other. This means we can discover that Kevin Pietersen once played at Leamington’s Arlington Avenue ground.

England’s new captain batted at number four for Warwickshire 2nds in a championship match with Surrey in August 2000. It was, apparently, a trial.

The likeable South African didn’t sign up at Edgbaston though. Instead he went to Trent Bridge, where Notts were prepared to double Warwickshire’s offer of a one-year contract.

Junior and second-string sports matches are fascinating to look back on. I saw Michael Owen score a cracker against Scotland in a schoolboy international at St James’ Park in Newcastle.

The teamsheet for Pietersen’s 2nd XI match makes interesting reading. Mark Wagh, now of Notts, opened the batting for Warwickshire, while Tony Frost and Jim Troughton are still 1st XI regulars at Edgbaston.

Former Warwickshire opening bat Jason Ratcliffe turned out for Surrey, alongside England man Ben Holioake and current Surrey skipper Jon Batty.

No one in Warwickshire had any doubts about Pietersen’s ability when they saw him three years later - he smashed 221 runs and took five wickets to help Notts to a County Championship draw at Edgbaston.

With thanks to Pat Gwynne.

After a good deal of pre-Wimbledon gloom - some of it from this column - it was good to see a British winner on Centre Court in SW19.

The mixed doubles is not the pinnacle of tennis achievement, at least as far as the media is concerned. It is played at all four Grand Slam tournaments, but nowhere else.

You wouldn’t have thought so if you saw Jamie Murray and Jelena Jankovic lift the trophy last weekend though.
The pair beat fifth seeds Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden and Australia's Alicia Molik 6-4, 3-6 6-1, in the last match of the tournament.

A popular victory, it meant the 21-year-old Scot was the first British winner at Wimbledon since Jeremy Bates and Jo Durie captured the same prize back in 1987.

Centre Court soon filled up as word spread. Those who stayed after the men’s final were treated to a good match, in which Murray and Jankovic had to disrupt the momentum of the more established pair to take the deciding third set.

I’m not really a fan of tennis, so - forgive me for this - I was more interested in the chemistry between the pair.
All the chatter and whispering between points gave Centre Court something of the ambience of a playground. It was rather sweet.

Afterwards Jankovic told the media she’d been motivating Murray with the promise of kisses. He responded very well, as one suspects most blokes would.

But in the end I felt rather sorry for the man who has to live in the shadow of his brother for much of the sporting year. Even his mum gets more media coverage than he does.

Murray Junior was clearly rather taken with his new pal - much more so than she was with him.
That was made very clear by several cheeky comments in the post-match press conference.

Murray had even invited her to spend Christmas in Scotland with him, something the charming Serb thought was a joke at first. When the penny dropped she said: “Christmas is a long way off. We have so many things to do before then.”

Alan Partridge once received a similar answer when he shamelessly used his radio chat show to invite a minor royal to come and stay with him in Norwich.

He replied: “We’re both busy people. With respect, that’s what I say to people when I’m trying to put them off.”
For once Britain’s worst sports journalist was right on the money.

Love matches are sometimes struck on the tennis circuit. Look at Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, still happily married as far as one can tell.
They’ll be sorted for Christmas then. Perhaps Partridge could invite Murray over to Norfolk this year.