NEXT month in the Lake District will bring a reunion with the cousins with whom much of childhood was spent.

We played football in Dundee’s Dudhope and Fairmuir Parks for endless hours, cycled freely all over the city and in the summer played tennis, golfed and even bowled together and, when confined to quarters, contested an assortment of sports-related games of the era from Subbuteo to Striker.

A particular curiosity at my house was a golf club length piece of kit with, attached to the end, a wee bloke in light blue jumper and cream trousers who could swing a golf club with varying degrees of vigour depending on how quickly the lever at the back was pulled.

The aim was to manoeuvre polystyrene balls towards a thin piece of undulating green sponge that was the green, at which point they were replaced by little white marbles which could be more reliably putted towards the hole.

If memory serves there was also a Bobby Charlton football game around but, among the more technologically complex games of the pre-computer era, ‘Arnold Palmer Pro-Shot Golf’ evidently left a more lasting imprint as an early example of leading sportsmen broadening their earning capacity by marketing their image through something other than sporting equipment or apparel.

Comparison with the greed that has, this week, brought about the departure in record time of an England football manager from his post would be crass even if we were not currently mourning the passing of a man whose fame, for a considerable time, transcended his own sport and who, thereafter, always conducted himself with great grace and dignity.

Working with the visionary sports agent Mark McCormack, Palmer also did more than any of his predecessors or contemporaries to transform the lot of professional sportspeople who, to that point, were generally reckoned to have been exploited by managers and promoters.

From that point onwards salaries have soared in all major sport, gradually gathering momentum in the sixties and seventies before, in the eighties and nineties, the word obscene started to become ever more commonly used whenever the incomes of the most prominent were discussed.

It is too late to ask and would be unfair to do so in any case given the way he carried himself, but it is tempting to wonder whether old Arnie ever looked at the largesse that now afflicts elite sport along with all the abuses that go with it and wondered to himself whether, 60 years on, professional sport is any better off now than it was when he was a lad.

Even so it would be lovely to be able to play one more round of Arnold Palmer Pro Shot golf when we get together next month and look back on simpler times.

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OF all the expressions Bradley Wiggins might have used to describe his intentions when using TUEs to allow him to take drugs that have the side benefit of potentially enhancing performance ahead of his major races of 2011, 2012 and 2013, he could hardly have come up with a less helpful one.

Asked by television interviewer Andrew Marr to explain whether the ethical difference between what he had done and the behaviour of those previously found guilty of using the same substance for doping purposes was merely that they had used more of it, he offered the following explanation.

“More of it, and abusing it, and – and this was to cure a medical condition. And was – was – the governing body, the World Anti-Doping Agency, everyone said this guy is not – this was about not – this wasn’t about trying to find a way to gain an unfair advantage, this was about putting myself back on a level playing field in order to compete at the highest level,” he claimed, rather haltingly.

For anyone who has followed this issue that closing phrase was all too evocative of the response of one Lance Armstrong when asked by Oprah Winfrey, another non-cycling expert choice of interviewer, if he felt he had been cheating.

“No. At the time, no. I viewed it as a level playing field. I looked up the definition of cheat. The definition of cheat is to gain an advantage over a rival or foe. I didn't do that. I viewed it as a level playing field,” he said.

Levelling the playing field is an expression that lies at the heart of the defence of some of the doctors who have sought to justify the use of pharmacology to support sportsmen, claiming that all they are doing is getting exhausted bodies back to what would be their normal condition.

Philosophically that is a fascinating discussion, but it is becoming ever more clear that, whether or not the letter of the law has been followed, far from occupying the ethically pure moral high ground, Team Sky now finds itself back on a level playing field with the rest of cycling when it comes to having to undergo scrutiny of its reputation.