By Rob Bonnet BBC Sport

It's 11.15am and the big names are keeping me guessing for the 12.30 start at the the Helen Rollason BBC Sport Charity Golf Day.

AP McCoy is on his way assures Mick Fitzgerald and Gary Lineker is on the road too - I am assured via his mobile phone.

This is the anxiety inducing twilight zone, the darkest hour when the arithmetic - and the goodwill that generates the profits - threatens to collapse.

But these men wouldn't be at the top of their trees through lack of reliability and sure enough, Lineker walks through the door just as his team for day is being drawn.

The classically timed run of the top-quality striker!

The cancer charity founded by the late Helen Rollason benefitted from the golf day

And AP has already settled into his chair. So we have as many celebs as teams the sums add up.

The business equation is equally simple. Guests pay handsomely to play golf with their favourite clients and the stars and then pay later at the auction for prizes donated by sponsors.

Deduct from entry fees and auction proceeds the cost of hiring the course - in this case Stoke Park in Bucks - and the charity has its profit.

Cancer sufferers will have benefited from this event by some �35,000.

Why do I tell you this?

Because sportspeople in general, and footballers in particular, do much away from the cameras to contradict the view that this intensely professional era has left them merely greedy, irresponsible and neanderthalic.

Modern football merely reflects the life that we lead generally in modern Britain

Roy Keane finds himself facing an FA disrepute charge

There was also Sport Relief of course, but we're merely scratching the surface.

There's a good deal wrong with modern football in particular, but it merely reflects the life that we lead generally in modern Britain.

Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Roy Keane's conduct has been reckless and disgusting and there must be a punishment now to show clearly that his example leads merely up a dead-end both for fellow-professionals and for kids in the park.

But by no means all footballers are like him...and maybe soon even Keane himself will hardly recognize the absurd figure that he cuts today.

So as you sigh in cynical disapproval over another instalment in this sorry story, remember that the red-tops like to deal in black and white.

And see it in shades of grey.