FIFTY years ago next year an American by the name of Mark McCormack signed up Arnold Palmer as his first client.

With that link, the biggest and most powerful sports agency in the world – IMG – was born.

McCormack (pictured) knew great sports talent and their monetary potential when he saw it and, having signed Palmer, he expanded his clientele to take in two more emerging golfing greats, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.

The connection made them all millions and, while McCormack died six years ago, the agency he created and drove forward is still signing up many of the big names in modern sport, icons such as Roger Federer and Tiger Woods.

IMG are powerful people and that they are, by all accounts, keen to take Heather Watson on board is perhaps a clearer indication of her real potential than was the 17-year-old’s victory at the US Juniors.

This company don’t make a habit of signing duffers.

In 1968, and having taken golf by the neck, McCormack branched out into tennis, signing Australian great Rod Laver.

He soon added Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.

And when he died in 2003 his list of clients included tennis stars Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Tim Henman and the Williams sisters, plus a couple of useful golfers in Colin Montgomerie and Sergio Garcia.

In his time McCormack was voted ‘Most Powerful Man in Tennis’ by Tennis Magazine, ‘Most Powerful Man in Golf ‘ by Golf Digest and in 1990 Sports Illustrated called him ‘The Most Powerful Man in Sport’.

His legacy lives on in a monster of a company and one which could just be the vital step-ladder our Commonwealth Games Youth champion needs to break into the top reaches of the world game.

WHEN I came into football about the same time as The Beatles broke up, it was still always a thrill to await the post and the postcard from the Rovers secretary informing me on my selection for the next game.

Players of all standards across the island had been receiving those cards for years and the idea was that if you could not play you would immediately notify the secretary of your unavailability.

Forty years on the system has long been defunct and the lack of respect for the invitation to play been diminished.

I could scarcely believe my ears at a recent match when I overhead one young player, 16 I think he is, telling a prominent GFA official that, no, he wasn’t going to tell the island coach why he had not made training and, anyway, he could ‘stick his team up  . . .’ and I will leave you to guess the rest and the expletives used.

Such lack of respect for elders who are going out of their way to allow sport to flourish, are not isolated cases either.

One senior club coach told me recently that had he been asked by the representative coach for an opinion on the several young players he was about to call up into his squad, he would have told him not to waste his time with some of them because they had not earned their place and their attitude stunk.

Needless to say, even if they were very good IMG would not be knocking on their door sith an attitude like that.