The Charity Shield was once a rousing curtain-raiser to a long winter in the mud. These days, rechristened the Community Shield for tax and fraud purposes, we head for the traditional clash between the league champions and FA Cup winners, with Liverpool having already played in Europe — and with winter and mud just a distant memory after the driest, hottest British summer ever.

Even before the news that Alan Shearer is to continue as a pundit on the BBC, this month has not been a good one for sport. Positive drug test has followed positive drug test. The cases of Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin, following the investigation into Barry Bonds and the banning of Tim Montgomery and Kelli White, have led a lot of people to ask, ”Are all these Americans on drugs?”

A group of Iraqi and English boys show their elders how to make peace. Clissold Park, Hackney, isn’t the obvious setting for an international peace conference. But here on an improvised football pitch, kids from England and Iraq are learning to live with each other.

A narrow loss in the second Test went some way to redeeming the Proteas’ reputation, writes Tom Eaton. In his wrap of the extraordinary second Test at Colombo this week, an online correspondent was inspired to declare that the match could not have been ”more tense, dramatic and gripping if it was scripted by Stephen King”.