Brian Reade's column: Is it any wonder that our kids are so disillusioned?

THE burning question of the moment is: "Why are our boys' minds in such a state of crisis?"

Why are they such gormless, under-achieving inadequates who can't pick their nose without asking for directions?

Many theories have been put forward to explain why girls are out-performing them at school, but the one which caught fire on the radio phone-in I listened to was as depressingly predictable as Ken Bates.

Boys are screwed up, agreed Joe Public, because their role models are gormless under-achieving inadequates who can't pick their nose without wanting a piece of everyone else's nose first.

They're called footballers. Men who believe the bogeys are always greener on the other side.

Is it any wonder, callers asked, why boys who worship the tarmac they drive their Ferraris on, are disillusioned? Any wonder they rebel when they read of Frank Leboeuf's disloyalty? Or lack all values when Roy Keane can hack the leg off an opponent in a charity match and shrug shoulders when he is fined pounds 104,000? Any wonder they are so hopelessly lost when they try to get inside the head of Duncan Ferguson?

Here was the final witness for the prosecution. A former jailbird turned mercenary who sat in Newcastle's treatment room for two years on pounds 40,000 a week is offered a new lease of life at the club he is supposed to love but turns his back on them because he wants a pounds 1million pay-off.

"No wonder the kids who look up to him have a warped view of life?" said a man called Stan, who won the argument without even mentioning his Black Country namesake.

On Wednesday, when the Ferguson deal seemed dead, I couldn't have argued with Stan. I was too busy playing therapist to my 10-year-old Evertonian son who, for the second time in two years, was ripping his Big Dunc posters off the wall in anger and disbelief.

They were the same emotions he displayed three days earlier watching Nick Barmby play for Liverpool against Parma.

"Why did he leave?" he asked. "We all loved him. Why go? And why THERE? He must really hate us."

I assured him he didn't hate Evertonians. He just didn't care enough to put them first. Same with Big Dunc. Get used to the fact kid that these days the only crest footballers kiss with meaning belongs to the Bank of England. And as he sat there bitter and confused, I realised that had he taken an exam that day he would have finished lower than every girl in the country. But how easily we do hatchet-jobs on footballers' characters! As Evertonians vented their disgust that night, Ferguson was ignoring his agent's wishes and driving to Merseyside in time to pull on the blue shirt at Elland Road today.

It was in keeping with behaviour which has been exemplary throughout the whole saga. Ferguson didn't want to leave Goodison. He never gave less than 100 per cent for Newcastle when injury-free. He didn't smash up pubs or whinge to newspapers on Tyneside. He didn't want to leave Newcastle but when THEY wanted rid of him, he was prepared to take a pounds 15,000-a-week pay-cut to join Everton.

Indeed, he only stalled on the move because his advisers told him he was entitled to a pay-off. Which, legally, he was. Ferguson could have held out for his compo cheque to spite Newcastle, or sat in their reserves for three years picking up pounds 40,000 a week. But instead he followed his heart and rejoined the club that is "in his blood."

And as he put the blue scarf around his neck on Thursday my son could have gone head-to-head with Stephen Hawking for a place at Oxford and battered him.

When I was his age all the players seemed to have their club in their blood. It's why they were called Boy's Own Heroes. Never has football or society needed them back so badly.