IT should perhaps not be a surprise it passed with barely a mention, but this week marks 40 years since once of the most infamous episodes involving an England manager.

For if you wind the clock back to 1977, the football world was abuzz with the news Don Revie had not only quit as England manager, but would be heading to the Middle East for a lucrative role as UAE national team boss.

To many, this act was viewed as the ultimately betrayal - even more so given the fact the story had initially broken in the Daily Mail before Revie's resignation letter had even reached the FA.

Not only this, but the 50-year-old was castigated as a mercenary for getting £20,000 from the Mail for the exclusive story and was to receive a then-staggering £340,000 - around £2million in 2016 - for his four-year contract in the UAE.

The incident effectively sealed Revie's reputation as a figure to be reviled within the FA, no more so than by the organisation's bumptious, autocratic chairman Sir Harold Thompson, a man whom both he and predecessor Sir Alf Ramsey had endured troubled relationships with.

Indeed, it has often been noted how the governing body were not even represented at his funeral 12 years later when Revie succumbed to motor neurone disease.

Looking back from a world where the highest levels of English football have been flooded with unimaginable wealth, the whole furore seems ridiculous - particularly the 10-year ban from English football the FA initially handed down to Revie before it was overturned in court.

The episode perhaps underlines how conservative English football still was in the 1970s, although even today Revie remains a controversial figure.

Still adored at Leeds United, where his 13 years in charge yielded unprecedented success at Elland Road and earned him the England job in 1974, his reputation beyond the Yorkshire club was sullied by accusations of attempting to bribe opponents which, although never proven, persisted after his death.

It is this and the 'Dirty Leeds' tag applied to his side for the perceived brutality of their approach to the game which have obscured his coaching ability and how much of an innovator Revie was.

Most notably, his production of detailed dossiers on opponents - inspired by his old Middlesbrough Swifts youth team manager Bill Sanderson - came years before video analysis was commonplace.

His decision to engage a sportswear company called Admiral to design Leeds' kit helped launch the replica shirt market, later bringing them on board to design England's shirts.

It is perhaps here the FA owes him a debt of gratitude as their latest deal with Nike to supply the national team is worth around £400million.

And while his spell in the UAE yielded little immediate success, Revie's work laid the foundations for the team to qualify for their first - and so far only - World Cup finals appearance in 1990.

You sense Revie would have been well-suited to the modern game. He may even have been viewed in a more sympathetic light too.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">try actually playing RL down here - we need the northern fixtures for legitimacy, helps sell the game in the south</p>— Matt Wheeldon (@MattWheeldon) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWheeldon/status/884083944702042112">July 9, 2017</a></blockquote>

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AS the rugby league season reaches its midway point and the battles for promotion and relegation start to take shape, no-one is any the wiser as to what the overall professional structure will look like next year.

The clubs in Super League, the Championship and League One have all held meetings recently to discuss various proposals, and – aside from a vote in favour of the League One Cup being scrapped – so far it seems as if the consensus has barely advanced beyond the stage of “something must be done!”

Of course, the tinfoil hat-wearers will have you believe the RFL will do anything to avoid Bradford Bulls being relegated from the second tier, which is seeming increasingly likely as they remain mired at the bottom of the table on zero points after starting the year with a 12-point handicap.

But any changes to the professional structure, even if agreed by the clubs, must also gain the approval of broadcaster Sky Sports, especially with regards to expanding Super League beyond 12 teams.

Frankly, the latter should merit no further consideration as there is neither the talent pool of players or the finances available to make an expanded top flight competitive or viable.

Further down the ladder, debate continues to rage about whether League One should be split into northern and southern conferences to avoid some of the mismatches witnessed between heartland and expansion teams.

But here is my proposal: Keep Super League as it is – including the play-offs for the top four – then merge the Championship and League One, and split them into 14-team East and West conferences.

Admittedly, there would have to be some slight juggling of geographical boundaries – plus Toronto Wolfpack and Toulouse Olympique placed in separate conferences to avoid unfairly burdening one set of teams with travelling to both - but it would provide a 26-game home-and-away fixture list.

As for promotion? Super League’s bottom three, plus the East and West champions and second-placed team with the best record from the two go into a series along the lines of the current qualifiers which is played at the same time as the play-offs.

Oh, and let’s get the Challenge Cup back to a less long-winded format by bringing all of the Super League teams back in at the same stage.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">WATCH: We had to share it again, easily the best run of the night from <a href="https://twitter.com/danielricciardo">@danielricciardo</a> <a href="https://t.co/JCUsCPpX23">https://t.co/JCUsCPpX23</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SkyF1?src=hash">#SkyF1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/F1?src=hash">#F1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/F1LiveLondon?src=hash">#F1LiveLondon</a> <a href="https://t.co/8zq0wV6Djk">pic.twitter.com/8zq0wV6Djk</a></p>— Sky Sports F1 🏎 (@SkySportsF1) <a href="https://twitter.com/SkySportsF1/status/885229705569370112">July 12, 2017</a></blockquote>

NO sooner had British Racing Drivers’ Club chairman John Grant announced they were to activate a break clause in Silverstone’s contract to host the British Grand Prix, than the ridiculous talk of shifting the event to a street race in London began again.

This fanciful idea has been floated and rejected before, although that did not stop Red Bull team boss Christian Horner from suggesting the sport’s owners Liberty Media could pursue it

One-off events like yesterday’s F1 Live show in the Capital, which featured a main stage in Trafalgar Square and demonstration runs of cars along Whitehall, might well be easy enough to organise.

But the preparation work alone for a full Grand Prix would shut down part of one of the world’s busiest cities for an unworkable amount of time.

At present, the only realistic hope for the British Grand Prix is for Silverstone to negotiate a better deal. Otherwise one of F1’s most prestigious races will drop off the calendar after 2019.