After last Saturday’s unscheduled home reverse against Grimsby he must wonder whether it was worth it.WHEN IT comes to Premiership passion few can rival Hans Deroon, who fell in love with Sunderland after watching them win the FA Cup final in 1973. So he went for a mix of the club’s standard, Keep Right On and The Jacksons’ Can You Feel It?. Stirred by the sound of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet on a recent visit to Sunderland’s Stadium of Light, Francis decided to inject a little mood music of his own at St Andrew’s and ended up with something somewhat less classical.”I’ve listened to a load of different songs because we felt we needed something more upbeat when coming out on to the field,” he said. The trouble was Hans lived in Rotterdam and found supporting Sunderland from afar “unbearable”, so he did what any self-respecting fan would do: he took early retirement, moved to England and rented a house near Roker Park He came for a year and has stayed for four. Or at least it is now that he has changed Birmingham City’s anthem.

Francis has added a new talent to his portfolio: that of disc jockey. Likewise, Ronnie Stephenson who was called from the ground to be told by his wife that has forgotten the bread and milk.THE REBIRTH of the Blues has been a long time coming and it’s sweet music to the ears of Trevor Francis. In fact, it was a set-up, the “dad-to-be” in question was actor Jonathan Spence and the crowd of 36,000 were unwitting extras in a film portraying life in the North-east called Life Is a Roller Coaster, in which surprisingly Dalglish was not asked to star.Not all such announcements at St James’ have been fakes, of course, although it must have taken some believing when, last May, Geordie fan Garry Fawson was informed that his wife had given birth to a 12lb baby girl. The pilot threatened to call the police upon arrival at Speke airport, where the press and fans were made to stay on the plane until the players had left the terminal.”A group of supporters were drinking beer from their own supply and had to be warned by the crew,” said Geoff Hall, the chief pilot for Monarch airlines yesterday. An expectant father was given a standing ovation during the match against Southampton recently when it was announced that his wife was about to give birth at Royal Victoria Infirmary. “The comment from the debriefing that it was a small minority among the 235 people on board who were causing trouble but the football team themselves were very pleasant and well behaved.”AS KENNY DALGLISH will no doubt concur, things are not always quite what they seem at St James’ Park. England’s infamous Cathay Pacific flight back from Hong Kong before Euro 96 was sweetness and light compared to Liverpool’s Monarch flight from Slovakia, however this time the troublemakers were not players but fans.
Liverpool have always prided themselves on the affinity which they enjoy with their supporters, many of whom have flown all around Europe with the club during the last three decades, but after the behaviour of a small group of them on this flight the club is unlikely to ever allow fans and players to travel together again.Drunken supporters insulted air hostesses, vomited in the aisles and were guilty of lewd behaviour.

“We had a remarkably good day, given the opportunities for disaster, and that has really focussed the mind.”MELGES 24 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS (Torbay) Provisional results, race 7: 1 B Ayres (Nor); 2 T Foyen (Nor); 3 I Walker (GB). THE UEFA Cup favourites, Parma, may have envied Liverpool their journey to Kosice last week while they had to travel to the inhospitable likes of Istanbul – where they lost 1-0 to Fenerbahce – but the journey home for the Merseysiders, after their comfortable first-leg victory, was more like the trip from hell. Race 8: 1 M Wieser (Ger), 2nd E Eich (Ger); 3 A Haavel (Est). Overall after eight races with one discard: 1 G Zuccoli (It); 51.77pts; 2 I Walker (GB) 58.4; 3 E Eich (Ger) 76.0 Selected GB: 7 K Sproul 114.7; 10 R Smith 126.. Lucy, according to crew Simon Fry and Simon Russell, was “great”, though she herself was numb with cold, but not so numb she could not contribute to a third and an eighth which puts Walker second overall and pressing.However, the young stand-in will not be available for today’s final pair of races, so Walker was last night frantically searching for someone weighing less than 86 kilos who could help lift a title being contested for the first time since the class was given full ISAF international status.”We are more than happy,” said Walker afterwards. Chief beneficiary, as series leader Giorgio Zuccoli found himself eighth in the soupy conditions of the first race and then was black-flag disqualified from the second, was Britain’s Ian Walker. Also joining Zuccoli, along with 18 others in the sin bin, was his second-placed American rival Brian Porter, who had also posted an uncharacteristically low 20th in the first race.
Walker had had his own problems.

The 1996 Olympic silver medallist had taken over on Thursday from US helmsman Vince Brun, who was suffering from a back injury. Brun could not resume yesterday, either, but Walker could not find the crewman he had recruited for the middle of the boat and it was 16-year-old Lucy McNeill who answered the last-minute call.Even worse, in the cold and drizzly conditions, the crew could only find two sets of oilskins between four, so Walker quietly suffered in shorts and with no shoes. Whitaker has ridden the mare for barely a month and he is confident that she will stop fighting for her head once he has found the right bit to put in her mouth.William Funnell was equally enthusiastic about Aniapollo, the seven- year-old gelding that he rode to victory in yesterday’s Danco Grade C Championship. “There’s nothing he can’t do, he has a great future,” Funnell said..