Hacker: You should be wearing your cap...

The Spurs and England forward Bobby Smith, who died on 18 September aged 77, was a prolific striker in Spurs’ glory days who could well have played in the ’66 World Cup side had he not been so outspoken in the press. To quote his Guardian obituary, Smith’s ’61 FA Cup winning medal vanished from his house and sold at auction for £11,000, with Smith remarking on the figure: "I think it's disgusting. It's only football. How can prices like this be justified?"

Fifty years on, money has changed sport for both the better and the worse, but the gradual Murdoch encroachment on English top-tier football, the resurgence of Kerry Packer’s idea of cricket-on-speed and the true meaning of the Olympic Games (sponsorship and brand endorsement, that is) are not what concern me this fortnight. My thesis focuses on excess; on too-much-of-too-muchness signalling that something has to change in the world of sport. One should recall the days when English footballers, drilled by an old-fashioned English manager, went back to work the week after winning the World Cup and had to wait several years for any honours from the Queen; by comparison, the Ashes heroes were awarded instantly, though that doesn’t make their triumph less brilliant. Ashley Cole would likely commit hara-kiri, never mind swerve off the motorway, if he does his research on salaries and lifestyles before George Best, who provides a neat link between Then and Now.

Two Men of the People whose careers in professional sport are all but over carry on the spirit of Best. One of the finest five cricketers (some, belonging to a non-militant group of beer swillers called the Barmy Army, would place him at the pinnacle) in the post-apartheid era has just retired at an age where most of his age group are settling into middle management. Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff did, in Terry Hall’s words, "too much, much too young"; irregardless of the pedalo incident, his infamous off-field conduct went hand-in-hand with on-field genius, fifers and centuries and matches in which he bowled, batter, slip fielded and captained the England side. Often he carried innings alone, usually with the leg, foot and back injuries which curtailed his career. With a talent for thwacking and chucking leather long and hard, he is without question the finest all-rounder since Ian Botham, who is now a match commentator and philanthropist. A one-club man for Lancashire who dabbled in Twenty20 cricket and has served as a contributor to the BBC Sport Relief effort in the past, Flintoff may well become a coach to the England cricket team and spread his bonhomie to young all-rounders, especially with the winter’s Ashes series looming. England fortunately have ample cover for the dear departed one, even if Kevin Pietersen has hit a batter’s block over summer and has an ego the size of the country he plays for.

In the world of pugilism, another Lancastrian and son of the Mancs Ricky Hatton put his nickname to incorrect use this fall. The News of the World, fresh from its scoop on the spot-fixing Pakistanis, ran a front page on The Hitman hoovering up some white powder - and not the kind he puts on his hands before a fight. The video on the paper’s website clearly shows Hatton snorting an illicit class A drug, with a menacing voiceover adding moral sobriety to chide the famously large-living boxer. True to his roots, Hatton was very much in touch with his fanbase with his fatty diets and binge drinking right up until a fight loomed, when he would train intensively and miraculously make the weight so that he could knock someone senseless for lots of money; at least, we now know to what end some of that money was used. Rehab will do him good, even if a comeback is actually less likely than a Muhammed Ali revival back before the Age of Celebrity.

Much has been written about the world’s finest young footballer (who isn’t called Messi, Fabregas or Ozil), but the adulterous conduct of father/role model/good-hitter-of-round-thing Wayne Rooney ties in with his international teammates John Terry and Ashley Cole. One can explain this behaviour as a spillover from the star system in 1990s England which elevated Paul Gascoigne to sainthood as he battered himself and his family by means of drink, drugs and mental illness. I don’t suggest Rooney has the same inner turmoil as Gazza, of course, and it is a testament to Mr Rooney that at time of writing he and his wife - a product of the WAG brigade who were blamed for the underachievement of the 2006 World Cup squad - are dealing with the situation in private, sheltered by PR guru Max Clifford, who makes his living apologising on behalf of morally-dubious-but-in-the-public-gaze human beings.

Note that Hatton and Flintoff are both elevated beyond their names to the aforementioned monikers, and sociologists can field all the usual identity/brand/reality conundrums. Perhaps the lone Wayne-ger story is a sad metaphor for sport today: young kid scores goal, kid scores on England debut, kid marries childhood sweetheart and becomes man, man keeps scoring but takes his eye off metaphorical ball, newspapers leap on story and enter Max Clifford. Rooney’s personal life, like it or loathe it, is intertwined with his public profession. MPs have the same problem, but the Archers, Oatens, Aitkens, Hamiltons, Griffins and Profumos of the political world don’t get hearts moving as much as the Beckhams (remember Rebecca Loos? And the sarong?), Crouches (remember when he used to do the robot dance?) and Rooneys. Remember the long Wayne effort which went in off the cross bar, and the ITV commentator squawking “REMEMBER THE NAME: WAYNE ROONEY!” when he was sixteen? Kids had their idol, but what is Rooney to them now? What is Hatton to a young fighter, Flintoff to a young Lancastrian? Our high hopes and dreams quashed and squished by excess, on their parts and ours. It is us, therefore, who are both the main culprits and chief victims of all this, deeming it right to judge our lives as students and professionals, with our modest incomes and little luxuries, alongside the Bentleys of people our own age scoring goals for fun, as the phrase goes. Whither morality, and whither the future of British sport and its followers? Bobby Smith’s medal is worth much more than eleven grand.