A COUPLE of weeks ago when I dared to question the two-faced nature of rugby union blasting football excesses when it can often be an arena for the most crude of combat, I was accused of working-class bias.

To some degree I would not disagree with that view. To this day I find that the treatment accorded rugby union, certainly in the national media, is far more reverential and sacrosanct than, say, the coverage of rugby league.

The 15-a-side code regularly gets far more newsprint acreage than that of its more Northern-based 13-a-side cousins. Signs of a North v South divide or plain old public school prejudice, perhaps?

Whatever, I would always contend that league is the far more exciting game.

But if there is to be any accusations of working-class partiality hurled in my direction, I can expect a fresh virulent volley.

We’re talking tennis and we know what that means in Britain.

For a large percentage of the home population, the graceful sport of net and chord, ball and racket is condensed, compressed and consummated into a single fortnight.

For just a mere 26th of an entire year our sports-loving nation is consumed by the grand obsession – actually bearing witness to a British success, which is usually as rare as rocking-horse footprints.

Forget Flushing Meadows, Roland Garros and Melbourne Park – pah. Discard all the grand slams – pah. Banish all the Association of Tennis Players’ tours and tournaments to oblivion – pah.

Tennis is Wimbledon. Tennis is a well-manicured, yet small acreage of London. Tennis is SW19.

Unfortunately, it’s much more than that. To the actual detriment of the development of the game, Wimbledon is much more than that.

It is arguably more about the occasion – the Pimms, the strawberries and cream, the maddening, glad-handing social whirl. It is as if the action on the various courts is a by-product, a noisy interruption to the social calendar.

Don’t get me wrong, I love tennis, always have, ever since I first played at school courtesy of a wooden racket bought for me thanks to several books of Green Shield stamps.

I’ve been fortunate too to attend Wimbledon on several occasions and have revelled in the athleticism of the players and the sheer brute force with which they not only hit the ball but control where it goes.

As a spectacle tennis can be as good as it gets. As a participation sport it can be as competitive, as compelling and as demanding as any other sport.

But I believe there are so many kids out there, potentially great players, who are put off by the wrong emphasis which is attached to Wimbledon. It is a tournament which, rather than embrace everyone, puts a potential generation of players in their place.

For me, the lather and blather of the social scene is ancillary and should be consigned to the periphery rather than the tennis itself being consigned to the hinterland.

But tennis Wimbledon-style is a fortnight of the epitomé of snobbishness and exclusivity. The two weeks generate not so much ardour for the sport but anger at how it is largely subsumed by so much class one-upmanship.

Until Wimbledon-reinforced attitudes change this country will never produce a working-class tennis champion on the world stage.

THERE are times when your own football club can test your allegiance to the nth degree. And this week is one when my club Liverpool FC dealt out a kicking.

As is the case with most elite outfits, a new third kit has been launched for the new season, though what’s wrong with having two kits – home and away – for Kenny’s sake?

But where the Reds have blatantly gone wrong is that the new white strip is bedecked in blue. That’s right, blue – the colour of our most ancient adversaries from across Stanley Park.

The spin-cycle doctors are having it large that the colours hark back to those first worn by Liverpool 119 years ago. Yes, they were blue but they were Blackburn-esque blue and white halves.

Surely it’s no coincidence that the blue on the modern strip is identical to the livery of sponsors Standard Chartered just like in the 1980s when the Reds sported a dark green strip which perfectly matched the hue of the cans of lager of then sponsors Carlsberg.

The late, great Bill Shankly, who pioneered our all-red strip in 1964, will be rotating in his grave.