Remember when your team or favourite sportsman got to the end of the 10 seconds, 90 minutes, 40 overs or five days and you knew the result?

Alas that is no longer the case.

It has been a bumper week for the administrators and courts who have all been busy imposing sanctions on teams and individuals.

And it is a problem that cuts right across the sporting spectrum.

There was the Test match England won when Pakistan refused to return to the field amid allegations of ball tampering.

That game, played almost two years ago, has now been declared a draw by the ICC.

Yorkshire won through to the last eight of the Twenty/20 but were thrown out when it was revealed that Barnsley-based former England under 15 skipper Azeem Rafiq was not eligible even though other counties have up to half a dozen perfectly eligible South Africans.

Dwain Chambers won the 100 metres at the Olympic trials, but it will be a court of law that decides whether he can even go to Beijing.

UK Athletics were happy for him to run at Birmingham, yet the British Olympic Association are set to fight tooth and nail to prevent him travelling to China.

And Luton Town have now been docked a barely credible 30 points by the footballing authorities for the financial state in which they find themselves.

Ten of those points were due to a breach of rules in dealings with ages, a punishment applied by the FA, and the remaining 20 are from the Football League for a breach of insolvency rules.

Their chances of avoiding the drop into the Blue Square Premier next May are surely slim to none.

Call me old fashioned, but was it not better when a team or individual won an event and everyone went home happy in the knowledge that they knew the result?

I understand the need for rules and regulations but when you get to the point where you no longer trust what you are seeing, it takes the edge off it.

MANCHESTER City are back in competitive action on Thursday - before many of their fellow Premier League rivals have even begun their pre-season campaigns.

But while Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal travel to the four corners of the world in search of games - and cash - City will be in the Faroe Islands for a UEFA Cup clash with EB/Streymur.

There are still three Test matches to be played in the England-South Africa series after Thursday's game as well as five one-day internationals, but they will soon be pushed off the back pages again.

And the most traditional of summer events, the Olympics Games, does not start for a further three weeks.

It is further evidence that football is trying to take over the world.

"IT is ordinary that, with 180 riders at the start, there is a positive test" according to Patrice Clerc, president of Tour de France organisers ASO.

He is right, of course, but how sad is the admission following Manual Beltran's expulsion from the race.