Sport may face more government control

Inside Lines

Alan Hubbard
Sunday 25 August 2002 00:00 BST
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Apparently sport is facing an October Revolution. That is the latest projected date for delivery of long-awaited report by the Government-backed Performance and Innovation Unit to Downing Street. It may turn out to be more of a bombshell than the damp squib you would normally anticipate from such an eye-glazingly named body if some of the rumoured recommendations are implemented. Among these is a plan for the Government itself to have more direct involvement in the funding and planning of major sports projects. The way has already been paved with the pending appointment of a Director of Sport who will report to the Cabinet. Wounded by the chastisement received over recent fiascos, and measuring the impact made on the nation's morale by the success of the Commonwealth Games, Prime Minister Tony Blair appears ready to give sport an overdue upgrade in political consciousness. This could include making the principal sports quango, UK Sport, an extension of the sports ministry once the present independent chairman, Sir Rodney Walker, steps down next year. Currently UK Sport is in something of a wilderness, with official responsibility in the areas of drug-testing and élite Lottery funding but no real authority or executive power, operating only nominally as an umbrella body over sport's disparate organisations. Moving it to the ministry might mean a loss of independence, but it would give it more clout. Whether sport actually wants a firmer govermental foot in the door is, of course, another matter.

Judo avoids another spat off the mat

After the disappointment of the Commonwealth Games, where she was controversially omitted from the England team after a bitter legal tussle, the former Olympic silver-medal winner Kate Howey is back on the mat as the British representative at middleweight in the biggest judo event of the year, the World Team Championships which begin in Basle, Switzerland, next Saturday. Her selection had seemed certain to create another row with the 20-year-old Samantha Lowe, who had replaced her and won the gold medal in Manchester, set to appeal to the Sports Disputes Resolution Panel after being overlooked for the Basle event. But fate has intervened in the form of an injury to Sian Wilson, who had been picked for the higher weight division of 78kg. So the selectors have given her place to the aggrieved Lowe, and thus avoided another embarrassing spat between Lowe and Howey. One of three judokas from Bath University in the seven-strong women's team, Howey is still deeply upset at being denied the opportunity to try for the Commonwealth medal that has always eluded her.

Out of Africa and still on the run

Shortly before the Commonwealth Games began we half-jokingly suggested here that there was a high risk of defection among athletes from certain overseas countries. It transpires that 21 out of the 30-strong squad from Sierra Leone have legged it from Manchester, and are nowhere to be found. Doubtless they have joined forces somewhere in England with the four missing members of the Bangladeshi sprint relay team, who vanished before they had run a single race, and the 53 "golfers" from Nigeria and Ghana who arrived, visas in hand, for the qualifying rounds of The Open but disappeared into a bunker. Word has it that Afghanistan have hundreds in training for the London Marathon.

Britain's top judo players are not the only ones throwing their weight around down in the West Country. The University of Bath also boasts a unique football team who next week make history by becoming the first varsity team for more than a century to take part in the FA Cup.

The remarkable tale of how a team largely formed of young players cast off by Premiership and Nationwide League clubs is recounted on page 8. Not only are they probably the youngest team in the competition, but they certainly have the oldest coach. At 86, ex-Welsh international Ivor Powell is a vital member of the backroom team. Powell made his debut for QPR in 1937, was transferred to Aston Villa for a then record fee for a half-back of £17,500 and managed Port Vale and Bath City. "The lads lads love him," says Team Bath's head coach, Paul Tisdale (himself only 29) of one of the game's great characters. "He is full of enthusiasm." In his managerial heyday Powell was also responsible for one of football's legendary malapropisms. Asked the secret of his team's success, he put it down to "the harmonium in the dressing room". He was also reputed have remarked once that the dressing room was so hot "the compensation was running down the walls".

Despite widespread media criticism of the sugar-sweetness of his ex-athlete interviewers (notably Sally "What can I say?" Gunnell), BBC TV sports chief Peter Salmon is not fazed.

Certainly not as fazed as Gunnell herself when Kelly Holmes seemed keener to talk drugs rather than splits. "The policy here seems to be not to let controversy get in the way of the athletics," murmurs one of BBC' Sport's senior pros. Sniffily, Salmon dismisses the criticism as "journalistic jealousy" but we hear that his boss, Greg Dyke, a bit of a newshound in his day, is less than happy with all the blandwagonning.

insidelines@independent.co.uk

Exit Lines

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