No shortage of eulogies in the blogosphere following his untimely death and not much really to add aside from the obvious – admiration for his own brand of ascerbic wit – and to note that as sports minister he was something of a rarity; one who you could genuinely believe cared about football rather than tolerated it as the national game despite much preferring cricket, rugby or god knows what else in the case of Kate Hoey.

A sad loss to the Labour movement, politics and – rarely for a politician – the sporting world.