Comment: The bonfire of the quangos kindled by the Scottish government proved a damp squib yesterday. The government reneged on a promise to the electorate to abolish sportscotland.

The bonfire of the quangos kindled by the Scottish government proved a damp squib yesterday. The government reneged on a promise to the electorate to abolish sportscotland. Yet it was a courageous decision, and one which, as sports minister Stewart Maxwell said, is in the best interests of Scottish sport. I agree, but I'd have admired him more had he simply admitted his party got it wrong. A review was so overwhelmingly against abolition that he was obliged to heed sport's constituency.

Unfortunately, the Scottish Institute of Sport, which that same manifesto promised would have "primary responsibility for the elite athlete programme" was emasculated. It has passed into the control of sportscotland. Serving two masters, catering for the grassroots while being responsible for delivering services to world-class performers, may be beyond it.

Disgracefully, sport will be asked to foot the bill for this government indulgence in dogma. Sportscotland chief executive Stewart Harris is concerned that Mr Maxwell expects sport to pay the cost of four new hubs to be established in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Stirling. He says this will be "significantly cheaper" than the original £13m cost of relocation to Glasgow.

There was a budget for relocation under the Labour administration which first put the quango's headquarters on the agenda. "We'll be working with ministers to ensure that the cost of this decentralisation is not borne by Scottish sport," said Harris. Spot on. Now that Glasgow is restored as the main home of the restructured national sports agency, I'd like to see it also become the home of the Scottish Sport Hall of Fame. This has been so marginalised in Edinburgh's National Museum of Scotland that it is referred to by staff as "The Cupboard of Fame".

Sportscotland will have a far more appropriate home in the National Indoor Arena than in an Edinburgh business park. It will be an inspirational venue for those charged with directing the nation's sporting future, a daily reminder of what they are about. So where better to house the Hall of Fame?

Sport arenas are the nation's theatres of dreams, and where we should honour our sporting legends. Not in a museum which fails to either appreciate or understand what sport is about.