Writing in his Observer column this week, Portsmouth’s keeper David James insists that while his financially beleaguered and relegated club may be down, they are far from out.

What prompts the England goalkeeper to this observation is not so much the imminence of the FA Cup final, where Portsmouth will meet Chelsea with a view to annexing the hallowed pot for the second time in three years, but the healthy relationship between the club and its local community.

"Having players visit a local hospital every Christmas is a nice gesture, but what about sustained relationships with the local community, and the mutual benefits they might bring?," James writes.

"The game appears to have forgotten its community roots, lost in a glitzy world of superstars and big transfer fees. But what might be the result of a more holistic focus?"

Holistic focuses. You don’t get too many footballers writing about them.

But James - who goes on to extol the local links Portsmouth have created with literacy schemes and support organisations for those with learning difficulties - patently cares about this connection between sport and the wider world.

His attitude is rare in top level sport, where being self-centred is not so much an advantage as a prerequisite.

Should James maintain the form he has shown between the sticks in recent weeks, the England team will have this shining light of idealism in its ranks during the World Cup in South Africa.

But at least one other England team will contain a similarly-minded sporting figure this year now that Gemma Spofforth has been confirmed as a swimming selection for the Commonwealth Games.

Although Spofforth, the world 100 metres backstroke champion, was beaten by her domestic rival Lizzie Simmonds at last month’s British trials, she was still feeling the physical and emotional effects of leading the University of Florida, where she is doing a psychology degree, to the coveted national collegiate championship.

The 22-year-old from Shoreham-on-Sea has lived in Gainesville, Florida for the last four years, and it is there over the last five months that she has regularly undertaken four-hour shifts, at all times of the day and night, in the Alachua County Crisis Centre.

Spofforth’s counselling work mostly involves speaking on the phone to those in emotional distress, but so effective has she been in this role that she has been asked to become an associate of the unit, which means she will be available during the night hours to visit callers contemplating suicide.

She believes her own difficult experiences in recent years have made her a more empathetic listener - she was effectively put out of sporting action in 2005 and 2006 because of pancreatitis that was so bad she contemplated giving up swimming, and in 2007 her mother, Lesley, died of breast cancer aged 49.

You will not find many world champions with such a sense of commitment to their community.

"I do have a very busy life," Spofforth accepts. "But I have had experience of some quite difficult things in my life so far - my sickness in 2005, and my mum dying in 2007 - so it is something I wanted to do to help other people feel they didn’t have to be alone when they had a crisis. People need someone to listen to them when that happens.

"I work regular four hour shifts - sometimes they are from four in the afternoon, sometimes from midnight until four in the morning.

"It’s important to act quickly when people come with questions about things like getting their food stamps in a hurry, because if those issues don’t get resolved then the people involved can quickly become distressed.

"With the callers, we divide them into two main categories. There are the chronics - people who are in so much distress that they call during every shift because basically we are the only ones who will listen to them every day.

"We also deal with suicidal people."

You do wonder if such interaction doesn't play on Spofforth’s mind as she ploughs through the training hours at the nearby University pool. Have we also got a world champion compartmentaliser here?

"What we try and do is to have all the phone calls in the same room, and to leave all the stress and anxiety related to them when we leave the room," she replies.

"But everyone that works in the crisis centre experiences the same kind of things, and many of the regular callers are widely known, so sometimes if you have had a really difficult call you can discuss it with the other people at work. It’s almost as big a family for me as I’ve got with the Florida team.

"Suicide calls are one of the things we are trained to deal with. One of the most important things when you are talking to someone in that state of mind is that you stay with them in their pain, just so they know they are not alone.

"We use the metaphor of jumping into the well with them. It’s not a case of shouting down to them and then saying you are going off to get help - you have to be with them, and to let them know it’s OK for them to feel what they feel.

"But when it’s someone that is really suicidal the only way you can end the call is if you are confident that they will be OK.

"When that happens we post up details on a board, and follow-up calls are made to ensure that the callers are in a better state of mind.

"It is a very rewarding feeling to think you may have helped someone at a time of real need."

Gemma Spofforth. A world champion with the ambition of earning more gold medals, ideally at the 2012 London Olympics. And with the ambition also of becoming a fully-qualified counsellor. A rare talent indeed.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames