If you're told to report to the cop shop you turn up, don't you?

Similarly, if the tax man or VAT man demands an audience you are there pronto in your best bib and tucker.

It's not necessarily because you are courteous but because you realise what failing to put in an appearance will mean. You'll suffer for certain.

So it is with sportsmen and women when the drug busters come knocking on the door demanding an appointment.

You forget to be present at your peril because the automatic assumption is that you must have something to hide.

So it came to pass with Rio Ferdinand who received an eight-month ban for his stupidity that has sent football into a tail spin.

Well, perhaps soccer will now take drug testing seriously. If Paula Radcliffe had failed to take a random test the death penalty would have been demanded on her career.

Football, of course, has always taken such tests lightly. The biggest game on earth is above such a thing and certainly the superstars of the superclubs are beyond such irritations. Well no more.

I like Terry Venables and I think he often talks a lot of sense but this weekend he's merely underlined how football views the question of drugs. As trivia.

Venables tells us that footballers are notoriously forgetful and never punctual.

Oh, all right then. We'll make an exception for these poor souls. Not the rest of civilisation but most certainly footballers because they are so busy over any given 24 hour period that things such as appointments are bound to go straight out of a cluttered mind - apart from those with their bank managers, agents, or chairmen bearing Christmas gifts of a new contract.

Venables adds that the authorities ought to "call a club the night before or at least hours before they arrive to make sure the one they are visiting is ready."

Blow me, this is supposed to be random testing. In athletics the drug czars can turn up on the doorstep of your private house at midnight and demand a sample.

By definition random testing is exactly that - at random. They aren't supposed to tip you off for goodness sake.

Football hasn't grasped what this is all about or how serious it is.

Of course there's a lot of blame to throw around. The FA system badly needs overhauling, Manchester United played no part in making certain Mr Ferdinand remained on the premises, and Sir Alex Ferguson has been attempting to influence the outcome with bully boy tactics ever since.

Whatever period of suspension had been thrown at Ferdinand there would have been uproar.

Three months and the FA would have been accused of clearing England's star defender for the European Championship finals next summer. Eight months which means he misses them and it's savage.

This will run and run with threats of appeals and courts, and the principle players Man U, FIFA, PFA, and the FA all spouting until blue in the face. Threats and counter threats flying like confetti in a swirling wind.

But for once the FA have stood up to Ferguson and Manchester United who love to interfere and done what they consider is right - even if the headmaster, FIFA, has been standing frowning at their shoulder demanding action.

We have often called our national association lily-livered and cowardly. Well, they have taken a tough stand and consequently are they suddenly barbaric? If you can't do the time don't commit the crime (of going missing).

Perhaps football will now learn. It's behaviour on the field of play has left a lot to be desired and often so has its hypocrisy off it.