THE dance of arrogance swept and whirled like a manic Viennese waltz through sport this week.

From the upper echelons of football down to KitKat Crescent there it was preening itself.

And such presumption was mirror-balled from football to athletics as another example of the over-bearing pomposity of it all.

Often arrogance is misguidedly hailed as a pre-requisite of a successful sportsman or team. You've got to have a touch of swagger to succeed, so the cliché goes. That, I would contend, is more to do with utter confidence in your ability, knowing you are the best in your field.

Confidence can stray into arrogance and the supreme example of that is the Premier League.

Despite numerous objections to the idea first outlined last week of exporting the top tier of England's domestic game to far-flung corners of the globe, still the premier powers vouchsafe what a wonderful wheeze this would be.

Failing to show any consideration for the respective Football Associations of those nations designated as fitting termini for the go-global gravy train, the Premier League have pressed on with evangelical zeal that what they are doing is good for business.

Yes, their own business, not that of other countries who rightly do not want anything to do with an initiative that could damage their own internal game.

Sheer arrogance.

Now there is the latest development of FIFA president Sepp Blatter now holding the 2018 World Cup gun to our head.

Blathering Blatter's view is that if the Premier League go ahead with their radical export plan, then England's bid to host the World Cup in ten years time will not get the international backing it needs. This from Blatter a day after the Concacaf leader Jack Warner, so often the nemesis of England's international football status, about-turned to welcome an England 2018 bid.

Again, both men displaying an assertive aggression that comes with having too many things their own way. If FIFA have an objection then get together, knuckleheads, and thrash it out and nip the folly of the Premier League push in the bud.

Had similar foresight been shown on a united front by athletics' powers then we would also not be treated to the unedifying debate that has sloshed and swished around like so many undetectable chemicals in a Petrie dish over the Dwain Chambers affair.

Drug cheat Chambers - he was dealt a two-year ban in 2003 for admitting the use of designer steroid THG - returned to the sport he previously disgraced with his presence and promptly won the UK trials in the 60 metres sprint to earn a place in the team for the World Indoor Championships.

The selectors did not want Chambers, who now has the overbearing demeanour of a victim, in the team. UK Athletics did not want him in the team, but the threat of legal action against precluding him from the World Championships left them unable to bar his way to Valencia next month.

There is an argument that because Chambers has served his ban - doing the time for the crime - he should be given a second chance. There is merit in that, though less in Chambers' own contention he is now trying to show he can triumph by staying clean. If he had heeded that creed in the first place there would be none of this mess now.

The ultimate sanction lays with athletics' governing bodies acting as one and not arrogantly concerned with their own empires. If anyone is found guilty of cheating then he, she, or they should be banned for life.

But what about York City in all this talk of arrogance as mentioned earlier in this rant?

Well, to those fans still contending the Setanta Shield exit to Northwich does not constitute the end of City's unbeaten run, get a life. They say that because the tie was ultimately decided on a penalty shoot-out then, technically speaking, City did not lose the game.

Technically-speaking, my arsenal. Given the same argument City therefore did not gain promotion against Crewe at Wembley in 1993.

Arrogance sometimes knows no bounds.