Inside Lines: Full-time football stays a game for men only

No argument about which is the fastest-growing sport in the land. It is women's football, by some distance, with the number of participants having increased sixfold in the past 10 years to more than 61,000. So it seems rather ironic that when a multitude of schoolgirls are kicking netball into touch and bending it like Beckham, plans to professionalise the game fully have shuddered to a halt. Fulham Ladies, who were the first to go full-time thanks to a seven-figure investment by Mohamed Al Fayed, are reverting to semi-professional status next season. The Harrods mogul blames the currently cash-strapped Football Association for not fulfilling their perceived promise to set up a professional league for the 2003-2004 season. Rachel McArthur, 25, is one who spurned the netball court for the football field. The Fulham Ladies midfielder, seven times capped for England, returns to home-town Bristol for the Women's FA Cup semi-final against the Rovers today (Charlton play Arsenal at the Valley in the other) knowing she and her team-mates, who are unbeaten in their two seasons as the game's only professionals, will be looking for part-time jobs again at the end of the season. "The trouble is Fulham went steaming ahead with professionalism but nobody followed us. Mr Fayed put a lot of money into the club without getting much back but we did think the FA would have started a professional league by now." Alas for the lasses, the FA now have more pressing financial priorities, like finding the money to pay for Wembley's extravagant fixtures and fittings – and perhaps to pay off Sven Goran Eriksson if England get licked in Liechtensein next Saturday.

Why Harrison needs the perfect 10

Will it be a case of 10 and out for heavyweight Audley Harrison when he encounters Ratko Draskovic, who sounds more like a James Bond baddie than a boxer, at Wembley on Saturday? A KO from the 37-year-old Serbian, billed as the Balkans champion, is improbable, but could one be delivered by the nervous BBC? It is Harrisons's 10th, and last, bout under their current £1m deal and the word is the Beeb have been unhappy with most of Harrison's hand-picked foes. Despite dwindling audience figures, they are unlikely to ditch him, though, preferring to negotiate on a fight-by-fight basis which may see Harrison taking a pay cut, especially as rivals Sky are not in the market. So confident is Harrison of dismissing Draskovic, he has already named his next opponent. On paper, at least, Blackpool's bulky Matthew Ellis, a former ABA champion, with only two defeats in 20 bouts, looks credible, claiming he trains "24 hours a day". "The trouble is," says ex-promoter Frank Warren, "he then goes to sleep in the ring."

Inmates' tribute to a hands-on pioneer

Despite being undervalued by successive governments, the Manchester-based Youth Charter for Sport is celebrating 10 years as the nation's most successful organisation in promoting sport as a vehicle for changing the lives of young people. It was set up by ex-karate champion Geoff Thompson in 1993 in response to the shooting of 14-year-old Benji Stanley on the streets of Moss Side. Today and tomorrow Moss Side is the focal point for sports and cultural activities marking "the journey from tragedy to opportunity". The centrepiece will be a huge metal globe depicting hundreds of hands made by inmates of Thorn Cross Young Offenders Institution, as a tribute to Thompson's work with their sports programme.

Those whom the BBC term "the movers and shakers of sport" have been invited to assemble at the Television Centre on Tuesday for a day-long summit organised in conjunction with UK Sport which supposedly is designed to find ways of "improving the nation's sporting life".

All the bigwigs will be there under the paternal eye of sports-mad Director General Greg Dyke. The cameras, though, will not. Proceedings are not being screened, live or otherwise. "That isn't the purpose," says a Beeb spokesperson. "We simply want a free discussion on the sporting issues of the day." That may be so, but could it also be that no screen slot is available in the foreseeable future because of the massive coverage of events in the Gulf? The talkfest was due to go out on Radio Five Live (re-named "Radio War" by insiders) but this has been abandoned, as was last night's live broadcast of the Harrison-McCullough fight in Glasgow. Surely that "sporting life" they will be debating has to go on, even on the BBC?

Talking of talking shops, there's a debate in Parliament tomorrow which may not be as ball-grabbing as the one which preceded the London Olympics bid decision but which could have a devastating impact on the finances of voluntary sports clubs in Britain.

The issue is the Licensing Bill, which proposes a mass price hike if clubs have a fund-raising event which includes entertainment. It would affect thousands of already hard-up clubs, some of whom could face an increase from £16 per licence to £500, plus a tripling of the annual charge to £150. Yet another bureaucratic raid on sport by VATman and Robbing. Fund-raising by churches will be exempt, but apparently sport does not have a prayer.

insidelines@independent.co.uk

Exit Lines

Gutsy is great, but does it get you where you want to be? You want to run smart, too. Sage advice from running great Michael Johnson to brave but beaten British athletics prospect Jo Fenn ... If my Parkinson's was caused by boxing, then there are a million boxers in the world. Muhammad Ali denies that taking too many punches brought on his illness... If you draw with Macedonia and then lose to Australia I don't expect to be told I'm beautiful and perfect. England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson on learning to live without critical acclaim.