Switch on and turn up the Power

I LOVE that expression "he has an uneven temperament", when applied to a sportsman. What it means, of course, is that "he is a grade A nutter, with a volcanic temper that is likely to explode at any minute - and God help you if you're around when it happens".

Jonathon Power has an "uneven temperament", although I suspect that he wouldn't threaten to see you in court if you described him as a "grade A nutter", so long as you added "sporting genius" to the tag. No problem - will do, Jonathon.

When he played in the Irish Squash Open in Dublin last week he was, by his own standards, on his best behaviour: he only queried an average of 23 calls per match, launched his racket in to the air seven times in a rage, slammed it in to the court wall six times, labelled a referee a "cheat", a "hard ass" and only twice, in post-match interviews, accused the same official of being out to destroy him.

A quiet week in Dublin, then, for the man from Toronto who, because of (and not despite) all his faults, allied to his sheer brilliance, unpredictability, style and ability to play strokes that haven't yet been invented, is one of the most exciting sportsmen on this very planet.

It's true - he is. Yes, squash is, and always will be, filed under "minority sports" but why should that detract from this man's wonderfulness? A sporting genius is, after all, a sporting genius, no matter how little interest television shows in his or her trade.

Okay, admittedly, hyperbole comes easy when you're still swooning from watching a world class sportsman in action, live and uninterrupted, but whatever higher Power - pun intended - resides in the heavens above, thank you for allowing me see this man do his thing before I'm given a free transfer to the next life.

Damn it, I'm tired of watching sports people who haven't an ounce of passion in their finely tuned bodies, who give the impression that they'd rather be modelling Armani suits than having run-ins with refs and who show as much emotion as your average mannequin in a shop window.

You want passion? Well, Power's your man.

The player who beat him in the Irish Open final, Scot Peter Nicol, received an MBE last year for his services to his sport. He's a gentleman, a brilliant squash player, the world number one, and will probably retain that ranking for as long as he wants it (mainly because our Jonathon has an aversion to training) but, like Borg next to McEnroe, he's seems fairly orthodox and rarely, if ever, questions a referee's parentage.

Jonathon Power MBE? Moody But Exceptional, Magnificent But Eccentric, Maestro but Eeee . . . JP: you REALLY shouldn't have said that to the ref. He believes referees were put on this earth to stop the rest of us having a good time and puts gels in his hair so it's spiky and makes him look like a squash punk, which he is.

His father was Director of Athletics at a number of Canadian military bases and was a physical fitness freak, but that particular passion didn't rub off on his son. He hates training and relies on his ability, as research has shown, to make the world's top 20 players do four to five times more running in a match than he does. Only Nicol can cope with Power, who is ranked at number two in the world after spending much of last year at number one, although when Power's in the mood and even approaching match fitness he is untouchable.

But he's dabbled with drugs of the non-performance-enhancing kind, takes a jar or two and once when his coach had to haul him out of bed to prepare for a match against the then world champion Jansher Khan a packet of cigarettes and a lighter fell out of his top pocket when he bent over to do his stretching exercises. His coach, Gene Turk, threw his eyes to heaven. Power couldn't understand the fuss.

He and Nicol don't get on too well. "He is not a guy I would choose to share a beer with," said the Scot. "The one thing that gets me about Jonathon is, I don't think he has respect for anyone. I see him as being so close to the finished article, and yet so far away because of that. He could be fantastic for the sport, practically the saviour of the sport. But in the end he always ****s it up."

Respect? Hmm. "Barada is just a little shit," he said of the Egyptian world number three. "You can't be more boring than Jansher," he said of Khan, one of the sport's greatest ever players. "Whose life are you going to ruin today," he once asked a referee as he walked past at a tournament.

But if comments of that nature anger his fellow professionals they're usually quick to concede that he's the best thing to happen squash in their life-time and there's no one quite like him. "He does things with a racquet that just makes you want to play squash," Nicol said last year.

Speaking of racquets. A couple of years ago a well-known racquets manufacturer agreed, nervously, to give Power his first major sponsorship deal. A senior representative of the company went along to see him play in a tournament and heard him, loudly, describing the racquet as "a piece of shit" and blaming it for his poor performance as he left the court in front of a full house. The deal was cancelled.

He's a crazy guy, but it's hard not to love him. One in a million in this sporting age. He takes to the court to the tune of Wild Thing at tournaments. True enough, Jonathon Power would make your heart sing.