THE records will show that England saw off the Wallabies in the Rugby Union Test in Melbourne on Saturday, winning 23-7.

That’s pretty comprehensive by any international standards.

However, did you know that... Australia had 71 per cent of the possession; spent 74 per cent of the game in England’s half; had to make only a quarter of the number of tackles; and made twice as many metres and three times as many offloads.

At least, that’s what the statistics say.

Hopefully, the victory not only lifted England up into second place in the world rankings, it did something far more important.

It confirmed that some day unemployment figures in sport will take a turn for the worse because that is the day that an entire industry is dismissed as an irrelevance.

The army of statisticians who spend their time compiling lists of useless information will have to find something else to do than confirm the truth of the Mark Twain observation about the different types of lies – there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

Does anybody, anywhere – other than the usual anorak brigade – take the slightest notice of the reams of figures that signify absolutely nothing?

Do we really need to know that a certain midfielder (no names but he plays in red) made 150 passes, but not be told that 130 of them were to a colleague standing five yards away? Or another player ran 5.37 miles but achieved nothing?

The discussion time and fancy graphics used by Sky Super League experts to report a match are the surest way to make this viewer to reach for the remote.

After all, you can make statistics prove anything you want them to prove.

Oh, and the result in Melbourne was still England 23 Australia7.

IF there is truth in the old saying about mud sticking, then Lord Coe must feel as though he is up to his armpits in the stuff.

Former Olympic hero to sporting villain is one big fall for the one-time glamour boy of the track and double gold medallist, but it seems that the corruption in athletics scandal that has obsessed the BBC and certain newsmen over the past months just won’t go away.

Sebastian Coe, a brilliant athlete of the eighties, has never struck me as a sympathetic sort of bloke – one you would like to share a couple of beers with to chat over sport or politics.

But for his sake, and that of the sport of athletics which has been floundering in so much of that mud I mentioned – and that does not even include the Russian drug scandal and their Olympic ban – it’s time to decide one way or another.

Is Seb Coe the right man to lead the IAAF to a squeaky clean future? Or is it going to follow another set of initials into a lengthy drawn out war of words and court cases before reaching a decision? Better not ask FIFA...

NOT entirely a Euro-free zone this week.

While UEFA (what is it about initials?) in their Nero-like wisdom dither over whether to dump Russia, Croatia, England and any other country whose yobs cause mayhem in French towns and cities, the show goes on.

It’s so bloated it has taken two weeks to get 24 teams down to 16 and, apart from natural interest in the home nations, have you seen a match – or a team – that has seriously caught your eye?

If not, then can I offer you the face of Christiano Ronaldo after Portugal’s failure to beat Iceland and his own failure to score from the penalty spot against Austria?

It showed that even the world’s best can have an off day or two. And have a good old sulk.