DOOM-SAYERS may well be having their day. As the credit crunch concertinaed on the world, a plethora of prophets of optimism suggested sport could be immune to all the fiscal shenanigans.

Given how football occupied the January transfer window routinely, but still obscenely, by shelling out pounds as in some carpet clearance giveaway, while even cricket was awash with the bling and ker-ching of the Indian Premier League, it seemed it was business as usual. The spend, spend, spend culture was still the currency of sport.

But in the slipstream of Sir Allen Stanford’s shenanigans attracting up close and personal FBI interest back in downtown Texas, the Virgin Islands or wherever the billionaire lays his hat, the plummeting status of the Royal Bank of Scotland is now sending economic shockwaves through a gamut of sports.

In all its pomp, RBS has poured money into sports such as rugby union’s Six Nations championship and Formula 1, while there were individual packages for the likes of golf’s undisputed world number one Tiger Woods and Scotland’s leading British tennis star and world number four Andy Murray.

Those deals will not suffer an immediate cut-off – unlike thousands of RBS jobs which are now in the gravest jeopardy, though, at least we can all be thankful that the pension of outgoing 50-year-old RBS chief Sir Fred Goodwin is safe. Heaven forefend that such remuneration of £650,000 a year for life should under threat.

Contracts will still be upheld, but there’s no denying that a wide range of sports will have to think of new ways of refinancing or maybe even rebranding as sponsorship deals increasingly grow more scarce.

Still, a sport like Formula 1 would, I’d venture, benefit from some of its customary largesse – the cost of each individual team would likely fund several Third World republics for a good many months, if not years – being reduced.

Those sleek, high-octane models, almost an exercise in the pornography of high-maintenance mechanical engineering, could be replaced by say, go-karts. Or if more cutbacks are needed, how about those bogeys made out of crate-boxes, pram wheels and skin-shredding string that we all crashed about on in childhood?

To my mind it would prove a far more entertaining spectacle for Messrs Hamilton, Alonso, Kubica, Raikkonen and Button to be hurtling – well perhaps hurtling is not quite the apposite word – but manfully battling through the chicanes in a bogey. If not, then why not a Fred Flintstone type vehicle?

Now that would be a test of stamina on the Nurburgring.

Whether we are in for a big crash like that of 80 years ago, sports funding will have to undergo a radical overhaul. But so entrenched is top-class sport in the psyche that it is highly unlikely it will run out of funds.

But before all the bleating starts in pampered pastimes whether it be football, motor-racing, cricket, boxing, golf, tennis – it will be at the grassroots level where the keenest and most fatal cuts will be suffered.

Those at the lowest level are going to be hit the most, are going to be punished more severely, are going to carry the can, in some cases, because they may have to wave a can into which any grateful contributions might be dropped.

THEY say your memory goes as you get older – and former Manchester United and Tottenham ace Teddy Sheringham exemplified that this week.

In the role of television pundit Sheringham was almost incandescent with disbelief that his former Man Utd club were not out of sight after a one-sided Champions League first-half against Italian hosts Inter Milan.

Wasn’t it just ten years ago that the Red Devils completed their treble with a European Cup triumph over a Bayern Munich outfit who had battered Sheringham and Co for almost all of the 90-odd minutes?

BIGGEST joy this week was the sight of Tiger Woods back on the predatory prowl. The ‘Phenom’ returned to the golf circuit for the first time in eight months in the World Golf Championship match-play tournament in Tucson, Arizona.

Then came the biggest disappointment. After winning his first comeback match Woods then bowed out to South African Tim Clark depriving a match-up against upcoming Irish prospect Rory McIlroy, who, at 19, has been seen by many as the natural successor to Woods.

So we’ll just have to lick our lips yet a while longer for a Tiger v Rory showdown.