News about Walter Smith

WHEN you deliver enough silverware over the years to fill an old Spanish galleon, your contribution to the cause becomes cast in bronze. On the morning of the Scottish Cup final, the late Walter Smith's impact at Rangers will be recognised with the unveiling of a statue on a corner of the stadium between Edmiston House and the Copland Road stand. Across two spells in charge, the man from Carmyle delivered 10 league titles, five Scottish Cups and six League Cups.

Although injuries are normal in sports, they do occur in the most tragic of circumstances. Cherry is not the first sportsperson to have been barred from action due to a strange accident, and it will not be the last. Sport has seen it all, from power drills to jars of salad cream, and there will almost certainly be more to come. Mail Sport has obtained a look at some of the most bizarre injuries suffered by athletes in the sport.

Richard Moller Nielsen, the son of former Denmark boss Richard Moller Nielsen, was a well-known figure in Dutch football, having competed for Odense Boldklub and Kjobenhavns Boldklub. He played for Boldklubben 1909 and Odense Kammeraternes Sportsklub in Denmark before deciding to teach. During his lengthy coaching career, he spent time at Rangers, Aberdeen, and FC Vestsjaelland before transferring to England under Jose Mourinho.

STEPHEN MCGOWAN, CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER: Walter Smith is never far from Ally McCoist's thoughts a year and a half since his death. The Sports' Journalist Association's favorite Pundit of the Year was named earlier this month, and the legendary Rangers striker and broadcaster switched to his cell phone the next morning. Ethel Smith, the widow of his former boss, colleague, and friend, had the first message. I won it on the Monday night, and Ethel sent me a note on my computer on Tuesday morning,' McCoist said.' 'She said: "Not only can I not believe it, you know who else wouldn't have been able to believe it?!" He would have certainly been scratching his head at that one.'

FRANK FIELD: The Labour Party was unelected in Westminster for major portions of my political life. Trotskyism and the hard Left were two of the main reasons for this influence. My activities against the Trotskyites became part of Labour's struggle to regain the popular trust of the people. My trials began in 1979 as a Labour MP for Birkenhead, the old shipbuilding town across the Mersey from Liverpool. I was 37 years old and virtually the entire local party was older than me, having grown old in the fight for the New Jerusalem. They attempted to follow a series of political convictions from which they were destined to receive no personal recognition.

VIEW OF THE BIG BOX: He used to be a free man in Ibrox. He invested the money with hard work and delicate mischief. He once had Barlinnie's confinement, but rather than a forbidding wall he could not reach, he saw the 'light at the end of the tunnel' rather than a forbidding wall he couldn't crack. David Martindale has been told regularly and uniformly that the past has influenced him. He is the ex-conducted boss, the scheme boy who has now done well. The general recall of the broad strokes should not, in the event that there are finer points that add substance to the caricature, should not be a distraction.