3 CHEERS...

...for Ryan Giggs who was judged BBC Sports Personality of the Year last week at the age of 36 and a career of almost twenty years for one club -- Manchester United -- and one manager -- Alex Ferguson. Giggs took 30 per cent of the vote, comfortably beating Jenson Button, this year's Formula One champion driver, who had been the favourite to win the award. Although Giggs got the votes on merit for a career in which he has scored 100 Premiership goals and has been a consistent goal-maker for others, it is tempting to think that he was supported also because he has been a model professional footballer at a time that the game of soccer is host to altogether too many players whose principal interest is in furthering their own futures. Many memories will have been stirred when Giggs got the BBC Award -- perhaps especially of his goal in the 1999 FA Cup semi-final replay against Arsenal when he got the ball on the halfway line, wove his way past five defenders at top speed and thundered the ball into the roof of David Seaman's net.