National Stadia: A farce that grew into a political fiasco
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Your support makes all the difference.The Football Association's recent announcement that it wants a new national stadium at Wembley but can't confirm its plans until April was exemplary of a year when British sport and politics combined to create farce from cock-up on a regular basis.
In February, Ken Bates, the Chelsea FC chairman who had formerly been in charge of the new Wembley, resigned from Wembley National Stadium Ltd, saying that he had been undermined by the Government and the Football Association. "Even Jesus Christ only had one Pontius Pilate," he said. "I had a whole team of them."
In March, Chris Smith, then the Culture Secretary, unveiled the design for the National Athletics Centre at Picketts Lock. "The stadium is the best thing to happen to athletics in the UK for a long time," he said. The venture was similarly lauded in Labour's election manifesto and backed fully by Kate Hoey, then the Sports Minister. Neither Picketts Lock nor Hoey would make it through the remainder of the year without getting the boot.
The Wembley debacle took another erratic turn in May, when the FA admitted that the project would end in failure unless the Government bailed it out financially. Jack Straw appointed troubleshooter Patrick Carter to review both Picketts Lock and Wembley. The Conservatives called the whole thing a "fiasco". They blamed it on Smith's "ill-fated" decision to scrap the original plans for Wembley, which had been binned after the British Olympic Association had said that a proposed removable running track would not be adequate to stage Olympic events.
The general election came and went, as did Hoey, a figure well liked and well respected for her hands-on approach, not least by administrators of grass-roots sports. She was replaced by Richard Caborn, who attracted ridicule soon after his appointment for failing a simple sports quiz on Radio 5 Live.
In September, Carter reported that Picketts Lock would cost £110m – or £23m more than Chris Smith's original £87m estimate. That month also saw Caborn announce that any decision over whether London would bid for the 2012 Olympic Games would be delayed for at least six months. "We have to be able to convince people that we are responsible enough to stage the Olympics," Caborn said.
The Government scrapped the Picketts Lock plans altogether in October, and then failed to persuade the IAAF, athletics' international governing body, that the 2005 World Championships, destined for Picketts Lock, could be held in Sheffield instead.
Which left the Wembley saga. They think it's all over. That's highly unlikely.
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