Blow for Sutcliffe in Move to Curb Ticket Touts

Supporters of a crown-jewels system of protected sports events, where ticket resales would become illegal, received a setback yesterday when a parliamentary select committee said it would "exacerbate confusion".

Sports such as cricket, tennis and rugby have expressed dismay that ticket touts are pricing ordinary fans out of major events such as Test matches and Wimbledon. Football has legislative protection against touting due to safety concerns, and the other sports had hoped certain events could be brought into line on commercial grounds.

However, the prospect of legislation being introduced to prevent secondary sales of sports tickets now looks more distant. The government's response to the select committee stated that "regulatory intervention" should be introduced only as "a very last resort".

The stated position, though, clashes with that of the sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe. He took control of the ticket-touting brief shortly before Christmas - long after his department offered its evidence - and is much keener on the introduction of a crown-jewels system.

Sutcliffe had hoped that the select committee's recommendations would provide a strong platform to push parliament to introduce legislation. The response yesterday, however, did not provide it. Although he has not ruled out a legislative route, Sutcliffe will now urge sports and ticket-resale merchants, such as eBay, to introduce "strong voluntary arrangements".

Act of Mersey

Liverpool and Everton failed to find any mutual ground over their stadium development plans for the future but they have a shared past on which neither club has turned its back. Peter Lupson, the grave-hunter who has helped several football clubs, from Tottenham Hotspur to Blackburn Rovers, to restore the last resting places of their forgotten founders, is now doing the same for the two Merseyside clubs. He has tracked down the grave of Ben Chambers, the man who set up the St Domingo Football Club, who became Everton - which after a rent dispute at Anfield led to the formation of Liverpool. In a meeting with Liverpool's chief executive, Rick Parry, on December 17, Lupson received an offer to help cover the cost of conserving Chambers' grave, after a similar pledge from Everton's chairman, Bill Kenwright. The clubs are now appealing to Chambers' surviving family to contact them so that discussions about how to restore and rededicate the grave can be held.

Driven to tears

The risks associated with trusting teenage sports stars as role models became clear to the Australian rules club Collingwood when their 19-year-old rookie Sharrod Wellingham was caught drink-driving on Saturday night. Collingwood have subsequently lost a sponsorship agreement worth $500,000 (£225,000) a year with the Victorian Transport Accident Commission - which first ran a road safety campaign in 1989 with the slogan "Drink drive, bloody idiot".

Matter of time

London 2012 organisers will take a step towards marking the Olympic handover from Beijing in August when they receive planning permission to install an official countdown clock on the capital's Tower Bridge. Omega has been approached to design, build and operate clocks around the country that will count down the days to the 2012 Olympics. The City of London's planning and transportation committee will meet next Tuesday and is expected to give the green light to the installation.

Storm in a tin cup

Nick Faldo's co-presenter on the Golf Channel, Kelly Tilghman, has sparked a storm of protest in the US with an attempted joke about how young tour players might hope to gain an on-course advantage over Tiger Woods. They should "lynch him in a back alley", said Tilghman of the all-conquering Woods in a broadcast of the Mercedes-Benz Championship last Friday. She apologized on air two days later and has expressed her regret to Woods but viewers continue to call for her resignation over what they perceive to be a racial nuance to her remark.