MIKE CORBY can probably forget any thoughts of picking up a gong in the New Year’s Honours List as a reward for his long tenure as “England’s Mr Squash”. He faces an avalanche of bad feeling after selling off the famous Lambs Squash Club in North London to developers for £4 million, prompting the 1,100 members to pledge their implacable opposition to any moves to nominate Corby for an honour.

They are astonished that Corby could ditch the club — where the British Open was held only last month — when he is the serving president of England Squash. He can expect a rocky ride at the annual meeting of the governing body in November.

Yet the Lambs case has an extra dimension: despite the government mantra that it wants more sports facilities, not fewer, Richard Caborn, the Minister for Sport, has not stood in the way of the developers’ wrecking ball as they prepare to demolish Lambs — known as “the Wimbledon of squash” — to build flats.

Nor has anyone made a fuss of the seeming conflict of interest in Corby being both a leading squash official and the man who will profit most from the demolition of a leading sporting asset.

So Corby picks up his cheque, North London loses a key facility and hundreds of sportsmen and women are left seeking somewhere else to play.

Lennart Johansson went charging to Moscow yesterday on his campaign to win a new term as Uefa president — a couple of weeks before his 77th birthday on November 5. Meanwhile, Bernie Ecclestone, at 76, is lording it over preparations for the Brazilian Grand Prix. Have these pensioners not heard of golf, or shopping, or daytime television?

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