As many questions as answers

Andrew Longmore finds sport does not yet know exactly how to use its new Institute

From steel city to the city of sport; the transition was completed last week with the announcement that Sheffield was to house the UK Institute of Sport. The sigh of relief rustled consultation papers, committee minutes, reports and memos stacked up on influential desks over the past two years. Now at last sport has somewhere to argue about. "I don't really care where it is," Roger Black said. "The important thing is that someone has made a decision." But that could be the easy bit.

The institute was a victory for the "network" principle of provision, known in the jargon as "nationally directed local delivery", which made it sound like a pint of milk. The British Olympic Association's one-stop site at Upper Heyford was rejected in favour of a central base with satellite centres, the form eventually taken by the much-vaunted Australian Institute of Sport. Sheffield will be the home for five British sports - athletics, road cycling, judo, swimming and triathlon - and three English organisations - netball, squash and table tennis. What happens next will be a matter of some debate as sports lobby for their share of the pounds 160m total funding. "All I know at the moment," Matt Hammond, the performance director of the Squash Association, said, "is that we are just down the way from netball."

While the announcement - any announcement - brought a positive response from officials, the joy of this "historic moment for sport", as Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, called it, was tempered with caution. Sport has been waiting a long time for an answer. Squash was first consulted about the institute two years ago, but was only included in the Sheffield bid late last month. "The delay has not helped confidence," Hammond added. "We have very good connections with Sheffield and are delighted with decision, but we still don't know what the regional network would be. My fear is that the regional infrastructure will be neglected and yet we need it so that the talent comes through." Some pounds 100m has been allocated for the regional centres.

The Squash Association's wish list for Sheffield includes an eight-court state-of-the-art centre with moveable walls, touch pad scoring systems, perspex courts, laser tins, an acclimatisation unit and overhead cameras.

Volleyball, a sport with strong Sheffield connections yet excluded from the official list of institute sports, hopes to get an office and access to a multi- purpose facility for training. "I'm a little tentative about what's going to happen to the sport," Gillian Harrison, chief executive of the English Volleyball Association, said. "It seems volleyball is being marginalised in terms of finance at the moment. The institute could be a lifeline. We'd be hugely disappointed if we weren't included."

Only in the New Year will the full extent of Sheffield's proposals become apparent, along with detailed costings for the pounds 40-pounds 60m main site. In the absence of bricks and mortar, the vision will take a thousand different forms. "It's got to be a focal point," Black said. "I've never been one for the policy of fragmentation and my fear is that the institute will become just like any other regional centre when what we need is a really impressive facility to showcase British sport."

The institute will still have an important role to play for those not included among the core sports at Sheffield. "I see the UK Institute being a sort of intellectual capital of sport," David Tanner, manager of the British rowing team, said. "I knew more about the other two bids than I did about Sheffield's so I will have to learn about it, but that's not the real issue. Sheffield is not the ideal place for rowers but where we could use it is in the provision of specialist advice, being able to tap into the world's best information on, say, a medical condition or in providing coaching courses."

Now that the word "successful" has been added to the answering service at the office of the Sheffield bid, the hard work for the city has just begun. After a decade of steady investment in a sporting infrastructure, after the financial fiasco of the World Student Games in 1991, Sheffield deserved its reward. Since Tuesday, offers have been flooding in from builders wanting to tender for projects and sports science students wanting jobs. The Don Valley stadium has already been earmarked as the site of a new 250m indoor centre, a 50m training tank, medical and scientific facilities and the squash centre.

"But we've not got a drawerful of blueprints for the different sports," Alan Brailey, a member of the Sheffield team, said. "We've got to sit down with the UK Sports Council and the governing bodies and see how we can fit in with their visions. I can't guarantee we'll be able to meet all their wishes. It's all still reasonably fluid - the champagne only came out of our bloodstreams on Wednesday night."