KEY POINTS:
Famous sports club owners who tried to turn things around.
Eric Watson (Warriors, league)
Got the battling Auckland club for a song and hasn't made much of a dance about it. Publicly, he's a hands-off boss (unless Russell Crowe is giving him a bit of lip).
Maybe that will change if the Warriors win more games. Hard to find during the salary cap controversy but he dished out thousands of free match tickets to Kiwi fans in Oz when the Warriors roared in 2002 and 2003.
The Warriors are respectable mid-table battlers under his control rather than the title challengers they were supposed to be.
Russell Crowe (South Sydney)
Crowe gets two thumbs up for cracking performances while trying to buy the club, but one thumb down since. Still, Souths have seen worse days and Crowe adds a roughneck charm to the game. He also deserves a medal for taking a stand against cheerleaders and pokies.
Elton John (Watford, soccer)
An endearing partnership which has not been wildly successful over time. John (pictured) bought the fourth-division club in the mid-1970s and it zoomed up to the first division. Players even sang on a couple of records. John isn't so involved any more but put on a fundraising concert at their ground a couple of years ago. South Sydney league fans can only hope this hasn't put ideas into Russell Crowe's head.
Roman Abramovich (Chelsea, soccer)
The filthy-rich Russian has turned Chelsea into Premier League winners and Champions' League contenders. About the only link you could say Abramovich had to Chelsea before 2003 was that he lived in the same hemisphere. Very good results have met with a mixed reception because they don't quite match the insanely extravagant spending.
Delia Smith (Norwich City, soccer)
Butter wouldn't melt in the famous English television cook's mouth. But she hit the headlines for grabbing the ground microphone to stir Norwich fans during a vital match.
There were claims she may have been cooking on wine that day which she denied. Smith, a Surrey girl who moved east, once wore an Ipswich scarf on television which put a serious dent in her Norwich credibility.
Not a hugely successful owner in a very tough business, she has tried to sell her majority shareholding to anyone who can invest further in the club.
