If I fall out with one owner I'm not going to lose all my horses

"If I fall out with one owner I'm not going to lose all my horses, but if you're a football manager and you fall out with a chairman, you've lost your job."Kingsdown is the yard from which Peter Nelson sent out Snow Knight one June morning in 1974. Now he is a commander himself, and supervising 75 horses and 30 odd staff at Kingsdown Stables is the nearest he is prepared to get to management "I'm my own boss to a certain degree here," Channon says. As a breeder on his small farm, he produced the memorably successful Jamesmead and Ghofar, and, after his joints started disobeying instructions, he became an assistant to trainers John Baker and Ken Cunningham-Brown. "So hot you can hardly pick it up."Channon started easing off the Bigtime Charlie routine in his mid 20s, by which time his interest in racing was already growing like bamboo.

But while any self- respecting current player is passing under the awning at Cinderella Rockafella's these winter nights, Channon is merely yawning and getting ready for his cocoa Well, it's Bovril actually, a legacy from his playing days "It's best out of those thin plastic cups," he says. It's still probably the most original way of doing it."Early in his active career Channon followed the footballers' dedicated off-the-field prescription: betting shop, snooker hall, pub (repeat the following day, not necessarily in the same order). "It just happened one day and after that it was expected of me," the originator says "I should have copyrighted it. Professional athletes and blokes with beer tummies can still be seen making propeller motions with an arm as if an attempt to get airborne.The Channon gesticulation was the fountainhead of the choreographed group absurdities of today, a gesture that was joyous, distinctive and, most of all, just plain silly. He represented his country 46 times, twice as captain, and found the net on a further 21 occasions.More than this, though, Channon made one of the greatest contributions to the game of the 20th century: a celebration of a goal which to this day is copied in the Football League and Sunday pub matches alike. Channon made 718 League appearances for Southampton (two spells), Manchester City, Newcastle United, Bristol Rovers, Norwich City and Portsmouth, scoring 233 goals along the way.

This though does not fully explain how he has managed to get to the top of two disparate pursuits The footballing statistics are impressive. "Let's be fair, we're not the brightest bunch in the world, are we?"Channon likes to portray himself as some yokel, as naive as a farm boy sitting on the back of a swaying hay cart. "I'm no different to any other footballer; I'm as thick as shops," he says. If that has to be at Carlisle or Edinburgh, I don't give a shop."The little lad from Orcheston on the Salisbury Plain has not done badly for himself, either, though he prefers to accentuate the negative. "I'm single-minded and I just want to get on and have winners. He likes the popular adverb of the streets and a noun which sounds like "shop" "I don't give a shop what people think of me," he says. You could say he's not done bad for a miner's son from Doncaster."Mick Channon occasionally uses phrases you never encounter at a Tupperware party.

He's a pretty shrewd businessman - he's had more practice than me because he's always had more money - and he doesn't have to do it for the money. Knowing Kevin, I would think something went off that we haven't been told about yet. I would say politics must have been involved."You get to the stage where there are only your rules or no rules at all. There's a lot happening up there with the floatation and they probably would not have been able to spend money between now and the end of the year.

Scratch a few more 0-0s and try not to get beat."A further factor may be that "three bags full sir" is not a phrase Keegan uses often."He's definitely his own man and there could have been a clash of personalities up there," Channon added "He'd want to do it his way. "We used to believe that if you got beat trying to win it was acceptable, but if we got beat trying to draw or conserve something then that was wrong That seemed to be what they were saying to him at Newcastle. It was Keegan, too, who helped launch our prospective trainer eight years ago, when a stayer he bred, Golden Scissors, became M R Channon's first winner."When we played together we went out just to enjoy it, and that attitude was probably Kevin's downfall as a manager," Channon says. This was the pair that was once resting on an airport luggage carousel on international duty when a Yugoslav policeman took Keegan away and explained with his fists that he did not appreciate the seating arrangements. This was also the pair at the centre of the performing troupe at The Dell in the bridge over the 1980s, a company that also included Alan Ball and Peter Osgood (soon to be was good). For at Upper Lambourn, in Berkshire's valley of the racehorse, resides not only Mick Channon, Keegan's great friend from playing days with Southampton and England, but also five thoroughbreds he has entrusted to the footballer turned trainer Keegan and Channon share a strong bond. While the Grub Street scribblers were skulking through the Everglades in search of Kevin Keegan, it could have paid them to patrol a wildlife centre closer to home. Substitute not used: McAllister.Referee: G Poll (Tring).Bookings: United: Keane, Cantona; Wimbledon: Sullivan.Man of the match: Keane.Attendance: 53,342..