Martin Smith: Steve Bruce's decision to quit Sheffield Wednesday feels like a slap in the face for Owls - and especially chairman Dejphon Chansiri after gesture of trust and human warmth

It was a gesture of trust and human warmth from the chairman.

It was the right thing to do and Dejphon Chansiri the club take great credit for it.

To now have that same man talking to another club - even the club he supported as a boy - is hard to swallow and has not gone down well with a lot of fans.

We know it’s his job and we all move jobs at some stage but there’s more to it in football.

Managers and players carry the dreams and identities of thousands of people in everything they do for their employers and they know it.

Some will say Bruce is merely ambitious and sees greater potential at St James Park, others see it as foolish to be walking into a club with structural, financial and ownership issues.

A club whose inner turmoil makes Wednesday’s recent history look tranquil.

But the pride and loyalty that has Owls fans seething at Bruce will be the same devotion that runs through Bruce’s veins for the Magpies.

Newcastle are already in the Premier League and deep-down Steve Bruce feels the same way about them as Wednesdayites do about their hometown club.

Not that that makes his public dalliance any easier to take.

*****

Sport wasn’t meant to be that tense - especially cricket.

Wasn’t cricket a game won almost accidentally on the fifth day when everyone was asleep?

Watching the World Cup final on Sunday will have been beyond many people’s emotional capacities.

Too good to miss, too hard to watch.

The sensible path was self-medication in the pub alongside fellow sufferers, numbing the collective agony.

Others will have cleared out their sheds, washed and waxed their cars, cleaned windows or made a scale model of Meadowhall out of matchsticks rather than face the trauma of the run chase and the surreal super over that left us all ga-ga.

With Wimbledon and the Grand Prix attracting their own global audiences we proved once again that we really know how to run a sporting booze-up in our national brewery.

This time England delivered the trophy in a final of unspeakable drama

Thank Lord’s it’s all over.

Cheers lads.