If I needed any further indication that the summer is coming to an end, the pitter patter of rainfall on my bedroom window provided it.

After near enough three months off my thoughts are starting to turn back towards Medway and the University of Kent.

The bulk of my time off has been taken up by two things: football and work experience. For the first month of my holiday I watched the majority of what was a disappointing World Cup.

The day after the final I started a two-week placement with the Medway Messenger – which is based in the same office as Kent Online.

To say I did a bit of everything would be an understatement. I wrote about everything from teddy bears picnics and footpath closures to snake bites and court cases.

It was an enjoyable and fulfilling fortnight of bread and butter reporting that I have taken a great deal from.

For the majority of this month I was back at Sky News Online. After familiarising myself with the CMS again I was thrown into the fray, being given stories to cover and picture galleries to compile.

Over the three weeks I wrote stories on the floods in Pakistan, mudslides in China, the heightened tensions between North and South Korea, the collapse of the tour operator Sun4U and much more besides.

The piece I was most pleased with, however, was a warning from the victims of the ‘Amazon’s Chernobyl’ to those affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that they should be prepared to wait years, even decades, for compensation.

I pitched, sourced and compiled all of the elements to the story, and it was published on my last day there.

At the end of the placement I was throughly knackered, and since then I have been reacquainting myself with a long lost friend called sleep.

Once Freshers Week is over I think we’ll begin to grow apart again!

The volcanic eruption in Iceland didn’t just disrupt flights across Europe for a few weeks in April, it also played a role in the downfall of the commander of the United States’ operation in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

President Obama yesterday sacked the four star general after comments in a Rolling Stone profile piece came to light. (By the way, here’s the full article).

The reporter that wrote the piece, Michael Hastings, was initially meant to spend two days in Paris with McChrystal and his entourage.

After that it would be on to Afghanistan where he would then shadow him further.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull kept them grounded in Paris longer than expected, and eventually they had to take a bus to Berlin.

Hastings used this extended time to his advantage, immersing himself within the General’s close knit circle, encountering a candour and forthrightness that has caused a media storm.

One of the questions to emerge from this story is as follows: would a ‘beat’ reporter have been as willing to expose the comments made by McChrystal and co? Hastings is a freelance and Thomas Ricks argues that this should have made McChrystal cautious. Jack Shafer doesn’t think it makes a difference:

“A popular theory endorsed yesterday by Politico before the site tossed it down the memory hole today—is that Hastings was inherently dangerous because he’s a freelance reporter.

“According to this theory, freelancers happily burn their subjects because they’re not likely to return to them, whereas beat reporters must rely on maintaining good day-to-day relations with them. I don’t buy this. Feature writers and beat reporters are equally capable of taking a dive for their subjects.

“I don’t know of any beat reporter who wouldn’t have gotten a promotion for catching McChrystal and his staff shooting off their mouths, and I don’t know any newspaper that would have hesitated to publish the story.

Moral of the story: If you’re going to talk crazy, no reporter will protect you from your foolishness.”

Before I started university I remember saying to a friend in the pub one night that it would most probably fly by. That’s exactly what has happened.

Last week I finished my second year studying journalism at the University of Kent.

This time next year I’ll be entering the big wide media world, looking for a job and aiming to ascend to the top of the greasy pole.

It’s a scary, but at the same time enticing, prospect.

For now I can enjoy a little bit of down time (and of course the World Cup), after what was a typically hectic end of term.

The highlight was my two weeks at the Independent.

Admittedly it was a little intimidating walking into a national newsroom for the first time. However, I settled in well and really enjoyed it. On my first day I was sent out to Watford to do some election vox popping and managed to get my name in the paper. Before the week was out I managed to get a few sidebars published.

At the end of the week, after being sent out to do another vox pop for the Independent on Sunday, I was invited to spend my final week there.

While a few of my ideas and articles fell by the wayside, the main story I was given to work on came off. I was tasked with finding Julie Andrews fans and their ‘favourite things’ related to the singer, ahead of her concert at the O2 Arena.

After an initially fruitless search I managed to find, with the help of Andrew Johnson – another reporter on the paper – a dozen or so and got quotes and pictures. The article appeared on pages 12 and 13 and I was absolutely ecstatic.

I was also lucky enough to be picked to work as a stringer on election night for Sky News. I was based down in Medway on the night, covering Gillingham and Rainham, where the incumbent MP Paul Clark had a majority of just 15.

Thanks to a few cans of Relentless, a keen ear and some nimble fingers, I was able to get the result back to Sky News HQ before any of the other media organisations reported it.

Away from the newsroom the football season came to its conclusion, and what a season it was for Chelsea.

Carlo Ancelotti and his players recovered from yet more Champions League heartbreak – this time against Inter Milan – to win the club’s first ever league and cup double – the most successful season in the club’s history.

Along the way I witnessed – and wrote about – some quite sensational games of football – the 2-1 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford, the 7-0 victory at home to Stoke, and of course the game that wrapped up the title – Chelsea 8-0 Wigan.

You can read my thoughts on what was an historic season here.

Now it’s time for some rest and relaxation – with some work experience sandwiched in between – before I return to Kent for my last year at uni.

Crystal Palace fans on top of the turnstiles

‘105 years of history, we will not die without a fight’.

This is the message that greets me as I walk into the beer garden of The Albion pub in South Norwood. This is the message that the Holmesdale Fanatics (HF), a hardcore group of Crystal Palace supporters, wants to deliver as their beloved club stares into the abyss.

The 20 or so members who are smoking and drinking when I arrive are not exactly sure what is going to happen. What time we will set off for Selhurst Park and the expectations as to how many people will turn out vary. There is talk of 500 supporters turning up. Some are more cautious and put the turnout in the region of 250. How long the protest will go on for isn’t known either.

But they are all adamant that something must happen. In the words of one protester ‘a show of strength and unity is needed’. With the club’s fate appearing ever more perilous, the group began organising this protest on Facebook on Friday evening.

The smell of spray paint and marker pen wafts into the overcast air as they make the final preparations to the banner. One of the group uses a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four to aid his shading in of an eagle – a part of the club’s badge. Another picks it up and jokes that he should find an inspiring passage to read out.

The laughter is punctured as James (not his real name) picks up a text on his phone. It says that the club will go into liquidation on Tuesday unless CPFC2010, the group trying to take control of the club, can do a deal.

As they take this news in, the reality of the situation hits them. The club that they have been following for years could very well cease to exist in under 24 hours.

When the time comes to leave, we all head outside and mass behind the banner and begin to march.

Video: The Holmesdale Fanatics arrive at Selhurst Park

Cries of ‘Eagles’ and renditions of the terrace anthem ‘Glad All Over’ fill the air as we walk past confused passers by. Some drivers blow their horns in support, others don’t know quite what to make of the couple of hundred red and blue clad people walking across the busy road, beers and scarves in hand.

We wind our way up Holmesdale Road, stopping traffic as we go. After the initial crescendo of noise, things die down. While a few of the HF are up in front, in the thick of the action, one or two are hanging back. As the anticipation builds to the protest’s focal point – the convergence on Selhurst Park – the noise level drops.

Hundreds of fans turned up on Bank Holiday Monday, with the club potentially less than 24 hours from going into liquidation

When we get there, hundreds more fans are waiting. When the HF see this, a loud cheer goes up and the two groups merge into one.

The chanting resumes, and the HF gets to work on creating a show. Amidst the noise and throng of people it is hard to stay with the group.

Two flares ignite and fans begin bouncing up and down. Bemused Bank Holiday shoppers from the nearby Sainsbury’s come outside to see what is going on.

Members of HF resurface on the roof of the turnstiles into the Family Stand and they unfurl the banner that was spread across the pub garden floor, along with another that reads ‘Ultras’.

From up high they play the role of conductor, leading the fans below through a catalogue of Palace songs, perhaps the final symphony in this storied club’s history.

All of this is being captured on film – a Sky Sports News cameraman is making his way through the throng, capturing shots of the spectacle.

Soon the police are on the scene as well. A single car drives slowly down the road leading up to the stand. The fans part slightly when they see it, however they don’t budge by much. The officers soon think better of trying to break up the crowd and retreat further up the road.

Four more cars and a van turn up. One officer told me the protest would only become a problem once ‘they try to get onto the pitch’.

That’s exactly what they do next.

Mark, one of the HF members on the roof, launches into a rousing tirade against the mess the club is in – and those he thinks are responsible. He implores people to get into the ground and onto the pitch.

Some fans surge forward and run through the unlocked turnstiles. A few begin to shake the big blue gates nearby, but they stay locked shut. Dozens get in before the police block the turnstiles off.

Those that do get inside get onto the stand and continue chanting. Cheers go up, although some fans aren’t happy with what the HF are doing. Someone starts a rendition of ‘Get off the pitch’. The police continue to watch.

Video: Fans inside the stadium

This continues for over half an hour before, slowly, they surface outside the ground. I spot them in the Sainsbury’s car park and there is excited chatter about how well the protest went. Just past 6pm we retrace our steps and head back to The Albion.

In the fading light of the beer garden we were in earlier we sit on a bench drinking. Mark, who has the logo of the HF emblazoned on his cap, begins speaking first. “I think a thousand people or more were down there. To have that many people down there is amazing. Everyone had the passion.”

Andrew, who is sitting directly across from Mark and taking periodic drags on his cigarette, listens intently and says: “We were waiting for the right moment and the right time to do this. Now it’s gone down to the wire and we decided this was the best time. We decided on Friday night that this was the time to do it.”

The view of the protest from inside the stadium

David, who is standing just behind Mark pacing around, explains why he let off a flair on the roof of the turnstiles. “I got up at eight o’clock in the morning, I was here first. When it comes to this club I go out of my way.

“A little bit of smoke, it’s like letting steam out of your ears. I bought a new pair of trainers today and I ruined them. Do I give a fuck? Of course not, for this club, anything.”

Who is to blame for this mess? The group are very clear about who they believe are the culprits: Sky’s vision of ‘modern football’ and former chairman Simon Jordan.

Andrew makes the point that there are more Manchester United and Chelsea fans in Croydon than there are Crystal Palace supporters because of what he sees as Sky’s ‘version’ of football that they promote. This has led to a drop in gate receipts, he says.

James has this to say on Jordan: “Jordan came in and treated it as his plaything and he didn’t want anyone else around him, he didn’t listen to anyone, he just ran it as he thought fit.

“He was making terrible decisions, taking loans out when he should have been investing his own money and spending that money on the club. It’s ended up costing us fans more than it will ever cost him.”

They all think more clubs will go the way of Crystal Palace. Mark says football as it is now is not ‘sustainable’.

“We’re going to be the first of many clubs to start toppling over,” warns Andrew.

“This is going to be the start of a crazy conga line of clubs going bang, bang, bang because companies like Sky are packing millions of pounds into the Premier League, this traveling circus.

“They believe that’s the promised land, they see it as some Harlem Globetrotters situation. They don’t care about the finances of smaller clubs going under, they just care about the big rich clubs.”

“It won’t be long before there’s two divisions that are professional in English football and the rest are part time. There’s no way it can sustain itself.”

Mark employs an analogy to make his point.

Dozens of supporters managed to get into the ground

He says: “You’ve got two sides of the river. There’s only four people on one side of the river and everyone else is the other side and if you want to get to the other side of the river you have to have a big enough boat. But if you pile that boat full of money that boat is going to sink. This is Sky’s river that they’ve created.”

The conclusion that cannot you cannot escape from is that there is a degree of powerlessness to such a protest. Mark and Andrew continually emphasise that it is the fans that matter in all of this, not the ‘money men’.

They think liquifying the club will be the end of it. It will only be the start, it really will

Mark tells me: “A football club is the centre of the community. It’s not like a business – it’s not like if WHSmiths or Woolworths goes out of business and you have to sack the members of staff.

“People have invested not just money but their emotional attachment. This is something with a passionate history. Football represents the culture of a certain area, this is a club in South London that represents a wide catchment area.

He adds: “This is people’s lives. Banks think this is just another business but it’s not, this represents so much more than that.”

Short of printing money, there is little the Crystal Palace fans can do to alter the dire financial straits the club is in. For the HF the prospect of just watching this was not an option.

“You grow up with the club. You go from the age of three or four every single Saturday for almost the whole year. With the group [HF] it becomes more of a Saturday thing. You put everything into it. For that to be taken away by something you can’t control is sickening,” says Andrew.

Mark continues along the same theme. “Think about the amount of people that have supported this club and brought it to where it is now. To have people that are using it as a fucking toy and deciding our fucking future – it should be Palace fans that push this forward. How’s that fair?”

The television in the pub broadcasting Sky Sports News provides the soundtrack to our conversation.

Every time Palace get a mention, the fans out the front go rushing in to hear of any new developments. When they hear the downbeat assessment of the administrator Brendan Guilfoyle, some in the group want to go back to Selhurst Park and break in again, but this is quickly nipped in the bud.

The police have wised up to what’s going on and a repeat of the scenes earlier would be stopped very quickly. Some do go back, and later on one of the group comes back to tell the others that around 25 fans are in the ground, and one of them is even streaking.

Video: The group were in a boisterous mood when they arrived

As the fans begin to head off, their instinct is to say to their mates: ‘see you next season’. There may not be such a thing for this football club. For the HF, such a prospect is unthinkable, and they say liquidation will not be the end of their action. Throughout the day there are mentions of the possibility of setting up an ‘AFC Palace’ team.

Adam dismisses such talk with contempt. “That will never be talked about, fuck that. Some fans talk about that but I think they romanticise it. That’s bullshit, not now.”

Their focus remains firmly set on the here and now.

“They think liquidizing the club will be the end of it,” Andrew says laughing.

“It will only be the start, it really will. I don’t mind what I do after that.”

As the clock ticks ever closer to Crystal Palace’s possible extinction, Paul finishes. “If those fucking companies are responsible for our death then those same Palace fans will be on their fucking front doorsteps. We broke into the stadium – the last thing they want us to do is go to their headquarters and do the same thing. We will not die without a fight. Full stop.”

One of the prevailing features of modern football is the decline in atmosphere. Many causes have been identified. The move to all-seater stadiums, ticket prices and television are all cited as reasons.

At Chelsea fans are doing something about it. In 2007 Jerry Kendix, a Chelsea season ticket holder who was fed up with the lack of atmosphere at Stamford Bridge, set up The Return to the Shed campaign. Three years on I caught up with him to learn more about the campaign and how it is going.

Jerry Kendix fondly remembers the old days, before all-seater stadiums, when the atmosphere at games used to be “electric”. Since the abolition of terracing in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster he has noticed the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge getting steadily worse.

The inspiration for the campaign came on a cold December’s day back in 2006. The Blues played Newcastle at Stamford Bridge and won a tepid encounter 1-0 thanks to a late strike from Didier Drogba. The game was pretty forgettable, but Kendix has one memory of the game – the complete lack of atmosphere.

‘The abiding memory I have of that evening was that the whole game was almost witnessed in silence. I sat there and thought: “This is just too much”’.

‘The game was so poor because of a lack of atmosphere and the staleness of everything that I thought “I’m going to have a crack at doing something about this”. So that’s what gave me the idea’.

The Shed End then...

After that initial idea he set to work on laying the foundations of the campaign. He set up a forum and began to contact prominent fan websites.

‘We got together with reps of the Chelsea Supporters Group and Dave Johnson of CFCNet and the guys on Vital Football and The Shed End and we basically promoted the campaign that way and through various other channels’.

‘We got the campaign off and running and we had a forum which I called Club Shed. We invited people to participate either by reading what was going on or just having their name as volunteers or members if you like’.

And with that the campaign was born.

It initially started out as The Return to Shed campaign and aimed to get fans who wanted to sing and chant to sit together at matches in the Shed End. ‘I thought there were, enough people dotted around the ground who could make a difference, who would make a difference, if they were sat in the same place,’ explains Kendix.

But improving the atmosphere is not the only aim of the campaign. Kendix also wants to bring back some of the sense of community that was present back in the “old days” he refers to with so much affection. Back then, going to a match was an entire day out, you knew everyone and you all drank in the same pubs. Now he says people can just turn up five minutes before kick off and there is none of the camaraderie that characterised going to football back then.

And the Shed End now

The first game that was targeted by the campaign was the clash with Middlesbrough in February 2007 and while it was a good start, at the next game against Sheffield United there was a marked difference in atmosphere. ‘By the end of the season we’d had the makings of a success’, says Kendix.

The club began to take the campaign seriously and started to listen to their views. Season ticket holders can now sit in the Shed End. With that goal achieved, Kendix changed the name of the group to Club Shed. It now works much more closely with the club. ‘I’m part of an atmosphere committee – there are three or four reps from the supporter’s clubs who meet up with the ticket manager and Ron Gourlay.’

‘We basically push ideas through, anything atmosphere related. So the club have been willing to help on many issues, they’ve realised that it helps them if we have a better atmosphere in the ground’.

The dialogue hasn’t always been harmonious though. To Kendix’s frustration the club have rejected many of the ideas that they have put forward. Club Shed presented the club with a 10-point plan to improve the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge.

‘What we did was we put up a 10 point plan and presented it to the club and said if you really want to make a difference these are the 10 things that you need to do. We didn’t say bring back terracing but we said the importance thing is to get like-minded people who are going to get behind the team to be in the same area and that either means terracing or more realistically, unreserved seating’.

To his surprise, the club didn’t completely dismiss the idea. In fact, they said they would consider trying it at a Carling Cup game this season. However, after speaking to other Premier League clubs Chelsea decided not to go ahead with it, which was a real blow, according to Kendix.

He remains convinced that unreserved seating or standing in some form would help arrest the decline in atmosphere he has witnessed down the years. But with seemingly little chance of that happening in the near future he has set his focus on other ways of reversing the trend.

‘The main problem for me is that people are still too far dispersed around the ground. What you need is hubs of people that would lead the other along. I’ve seen it in so many other grounds, especially if you go away in Europe – the grounds are really rocking. Primarily because there are 2 or 300 people in one particular section usually behind the goal who…are really sort of cheerleading if you like and leading the rest along’.

Kendix also wants to make it cheaper for younger fans to go to matches. Once you hit 16 you are classed as an adult and have to pay adult prices for season tickets, which can be as much as £800.

Of course the danger with such attempts to make a bit of noise is that it can all feel forced, contrived and stage-managed. Steve 52, who started going to Chelsea games in the 1960s, said: ‘A lot of the people who are involved don’t understand what needs to be done. Also, the younger fans aren’t really capable of recreating the atmosphere of old – different generation, different times’. Mark , 34, agrees, but thinks that it’s better than doing nothing.

Kendix understands such criticism and insists that while there has to be some element of stage-management to the whole process, the campaign doesn’t put forward ideas that are explicitly contrived. People have asked for claxons and drums at games, but they haven’t got off the ground because of this very reason. ‘You’ve got to generate it [atmosphere] somehow so there’s going to be an element of stage management of course but we all agreed that anything that was clearly forced wouldn’t progress’.

There has been a definite improvement at Stamford Bridge, but there’s still a lot to be done.

Kendix says; ‘It’s been a very interesting road that we’ve gone down. We could do so much more if we were allowed to and once we put a few things in place we would let it naturally run its course. Once you put the framework in place, i.e. get the people in the right place, coordinate things with the club, then you just let people sing and shout and do what they like’.

He concludes: ‘But until such time as we get either unreserved seating or an area behind the goals where we can put the 16-21s, people we can actually harness and get them to continue the good work then our work isn’t done. We’ll still crack on in the hope that we can get there one day. We keep banging away at the club, it’s just a case of watching this space really’.

As ever at the CfJ, it has been a very busy few weeks.

On 24th February, us second year undergraduates had our online newsday. We had a website – called the Centre for Journalism Newswire -  which was designed and maintained by Nick Poskitt, who did a fantastic job. From eight in the morning until five in the evening we were tasked with keeping it updated with news, video and audio under Beckah Floyd, who was editor.

I was on Sport and Comment, and it turned out to be an enjoyable day. Each desk produced at least one piece of multimedia content and the traffic we received wasn’t too shabby given it was our first day.

Last Wednesday (3rd March), the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, delivered the second Bob Friend Memorial Lecture at the university. This years winner of the Bob Friend Memorial Scholarship is Daniel May, who seemed really pleased at winning. I’m sure he’ll enjoy his time at Sky News as much as I did.

I covered the lecture for the Centre for Journalism website (which also has video clips) and also got a bylined piece in the local paper – the Medway Messenger. At the end of the lecture Thompson took questions from the audience and I asked him about the closure of 6 Music and the BBC Asian Network, which gave me the top line for my piece.

Allan Little also visited the centre today and talked to first and second years about the industry and passed on some tips to us. My colleague Rebecca Hughes has posted on her site about his visit – incidentally she launched her site today.

In addition I’ve begun writing for Bleacher Report as a Chelsea Featured Columnist. The Blues are hardly a boring club to support or write about but these past few weeks have provided me with plenty of source material. The fan in me hopes I’ll be writing about a trophy win or two come May. You can view my columns by clicking here.

Next week of course it is the return of The Special One, Jose Mourinho, to Stamford Bridge, which should prove to be a very nervous evening. I’ll be in my usual seat in the West Stand, paying homage to the man who won us so many trophies during that glorious three-year spell.

That’s it for the moment. I doubt I’ll have much time to post on here before the end of term (9th April) as I have the usual deluge of essays and assignments to do before then. Bye for now.

As part of the online block of my Convergent Journalism module, the Centre for Journalism is having an online newsday on Wednesday (24th February).

Throughout the day we will be adding articles and multimedia content to a custom built website – the CfJ Newswire.

The site isn’t 100% ready, but be sure to check it out on the day for all the latest news, comment and sport.

Any feedback is much appreciated.

Rawnsley's book has caused quite a stir

That was the rebuttal issued by Peter Mandelson on the Andrew Marr show this morning in response to allegations in the new-look Observer.

The paper is serialising a book by its chief political commentator Andrew Rawnsley – The End of the Party – which charts the fortunes of the Labour party under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Chief among the allegations is that Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, became so concerned by reports of Brown’s explosive temper that he looked into the matter and told the PM: ‘This is no way to get things done’.

To no great surprise Downing Street is adamant Rawnsley’s claims are untrue. As well as the aforementioned Mandelson interview, the Cabinet Office has denied any such warning was made. In addition, Brown himself moved to pre-empt the Observer’s allegations. ‘Let me just say, absolutely clearly, so that there is no misunderstanding about that: I have never, never hit anybody in my life,’ he said in an interview with Channel 4 News.

Rawnsley is sticking with his story.

‘I approached this subject acutely aware that a rumour is not the same as a fact,” he says in a piece published in the paper today.

‘I set a rule that I would not publish anything about an episode involving abusive behaviour unless I had secured utterly reliable accounts. Some incidents which came to my attention have been excluded even when I was convinced they were true because I was not quite satisfied with the evidence for them. Investigation of other incidents secured eyewitness accounts from impeccable sources of shocking episodes, some of which are included in today’s extract. Only once I was absolutely satisfied about the veracity of a story did it go in the book. The sources are 24 carat.’

Confronting criticism that the serialisation and publication of the book is simply a ploy to boost sales and circulation, Rawnsley says:

‘It is a journalist’s duty to both himself and to his readers to be unflinchingly truthful about the flaws of the powerful. It is equally an obligation to give credit where it is due. The book strives to offer a balanced account of Labour’s time in office, highlighting the achievements as well as exploring the failures. In today’s serialisation, you can also sample part of the account of the financial crisis during which Gordon Brown displayed some of his positive attributes as a leader. In October 2008, even those cabinet colleagues and civil servants who were otherwise in utter despair about the prime minister were admiring of the boldness and imagination with which he reacted to the crisis by producing a blueprint for saving the financial system which was broadly copied around the world.

‘The Good Gordon and the Bad Brown co-exist in the clever, proud, sensitive, raging, tearful, tormented, complex man who has ruled Britain for nearly three years and now asks for his tenure to be extended for another five. Before they make their choice, the public deserves to be fully acquainted with both Browns.’

I couldn’t agree more.

This month I began work as a Chelsea Featured Columnist on Bleacher Report.

It entails me producing weekly columns about the team which will be syndicated with websites such as USA Today, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated and the Telegraph.

You can read my first column here.

John Terry could lose the England captaincy following the revelations about an affair with Wayne Bridge's ex-girlfriend

On the pitch, John Terry is the embodiment of the power, passion and dedication that marks out any great leader. Throughout his career at Chelsea and for England, the 29-year-old has put his body on the line. Managers across the world would kill to have some like Terry in their team.

There is no doubt that he is a fantastic player, but as a man he leaves a lot to be desired.

Normally I am ready to overlook a player’s indiscretions off the field if he performs on it.

Ashley Cole is a case in point. His acrimonious falling out with Arsenal is well-documented. He cheated on his wife Cheryl (absolute madness if you ask me) and on Friday he was fined £1,000 and banned from driving for four months after being caught doing 104mph in a 50 zone.

On the field though, he is a brilliant left back, one of the best in the world.

But Terry is different. He is the leader of his country. He should be held up to a much higher standard. He should be an example for others to follow.

If the papers are to be believed, he didn’t just have an affair with anybody - he slept with his ex-team mate’s girlfriend, got her pregnant and then arranged for an abortion.

When Wayne Bridge left Chelsea last January for Manchester City – a club Terry nearly joined in the summer - the Chelsea skipper said: “He’ll be missed and I’m still in shock a little bit, because it’s a shame to see one of the lads go who you have grown up with and been with a long time. I’m disappointed but for him it was the right decision. He was great to have around the place.”

The pair were clearly good friends.

Bridge is said to be ‘in bits’ after finding out about the affair, and who can blame him? How would you feel if someone you thought was one of your best friends was sleeping with your girlfriend?

Of course everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect. The problem is, this is not an isolated incident. Terry has done this before. Most people learn from their mistakes. Terry hasn’t. In 2005 he said: “I’ve mis-behaved and slept with girls behind her [wife Toni Terry’s] back. I’m not going to cheat on her ever again and I want to marry her more than anything.”

The affair could affect dressing room unity just four months before the start of the World Cup.

Noises coming out of the Football Association’s headquarters is that the decision will ultimately rest with manager Fabio Capello. He will have to decide how damaging this affair is. Should what a player gets up to in his private life affect his profession? Such a judgement is not black and white. This fling blurs the distinctions between the two.

Losing the captaincy would be a crushing blow to Terry. He clearly wears it with pride. Sympathy would not be forthcoming, because, in the end, he would have no one to blame but himself.