One of the local reporters asks him whether he feels settled at the Albion

One of the local reporters asks him whether he feels settled at the Albion. “Not quite yet,” he says, rather diffidently, “but it’s getting better all the time.” Again, his boyishness shines through; the answer evokes a lad moving up from primary to secondary school. Afterwards he said: “It’s been a long road but I want to say a massive thank you to all my friends, especially my family and my team.”I am world champion and I think I deserved it at the end. The world championship is going back to where it belongs – Great Britain.”There was no option of making a mistake. I can’t imagine the disappointment I would feel if I finished second. It was a great fight with R?s all year.”* Sete Gibernau boosted his MotoGP world title hopes with victory in the inaugural Qatar GP on Saturday. The Spaniard cut Valentino Rossi’s championship lead to just 14 points..

West Bromwich Albion registered their first Premiership win of the season on Saturday, hoiking themselves up the table after beating Bolton Wanderers 2-1. This they achieved without Robert Earnshaw, their record £3m signing from Cardiff City. The West Brom manager Gary Megson left Earnshaw on the bench, fuelling the perception that maybe the Welshman, such a hit at Ninian Park, is out of his depth at this level Almost physically out of his depth, it is tempting to say. Earnshaw stands only 5ft 6in in his yellow socks, making him the Premiership’s most diminutive striker.
He has had only two starts, and his brief career in the top flight can be summed up by the penalty he thrashed over the bar against Fulham.Of course, he wouldn’t be the first lower-league goal-scoring machine to malfunction in the Premiership; Bobby Zamora, rampant for Brighton & Hove Albion, was another. Yet Zamora did not score the winner against Germany on his international debut Earnshaw did.

And in February’s friendly against Scotland, he coolly bagged a hat-trick. So he seems to be able to cut it in international football, and may yet be handed the job of unpicking the England defence in Saturday’s World Cup qualifier. Saturday’s result notwithstanding, suggestions that he is not good enough for the Premiership could prove to be grossly premature.The first thing one observes on meeting Earnshaw is that he looks smaller than his 5ft 6in. Pairing him in the Albion attack with the beanpole Kanu seems like the work, not of a football manager, but of a music hall impresario. Indeed, an Albion-supporting friend of mine says wryly that the club should not have given Earnshaw a fitness test before signing him from Cardiff City, it should have measured him And this is not a simple matter of sizeism. The same friend observes that the recent spectacle at Anfield of Earnshaw jumping against Sami Hyypia put him in mind of a frustrated little boy, having had his sweets confiscated by his dad, trying energetically but forlornly to get them back.There is certainly something boyish about Earnshaw. He is 23 but could pass for 18, his lack of height compounded by angelic features and a shy, buck-toothed smile.

On the other hand, football has had its share of baby-faced assassins, and the Premiership is ready for a successor to the stricken Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Moreover, I have interviewed some towering central defenders down the years, towering both in stature and accomplishment, and they all say – the Tony Adamses and the Alan Hansens – that the strikers who troubled them most were the guys with the low centres of gravity.Earnshaw’s centre of gravity is lower than most. Has he the correspondingly high level of skill and mental toughness to go with it? We will see.In the meantime, Mark Hughes, into his last 10 days as Wales coach, will be aware that whichever pair of Sol Campbell, Rio Ferdinand and John Terry makes up England’s central-defensive partnership at Old Trafford, they will have limited experience of Earnshaw. And vice-versa, of course, although Earnshaw recalls with some pleasure his one encounter with Ferdinand.