The recent revelations about the child sex abuse that went on at Crewe Football Club have been truly shocking. It is hard to imagine how difficult it has been for Andy Woodward, Paul Stewart, David White, Steve Walters and Mark Williams to go public about the abuse they suffered as children at the hands of Barry Bennell, as well as the other men who are beginning to emerge with their own horrific stories of child sex abuse.

These revelations of what went on a few decades ago have shaken football to its core and, quite rightly, a spotlight is now being shone upon the entire sport and its child protection practices. But while football finds itself in the headlines at the moment, it would be astonishingly naïve to think that it is the only sport that has been or will be afflicted by these problems.

I’ve been involved in sport ever since I can remember. I have worked with coaches in a variety of sports, but primarily badminton, since I was primary school age. And I was coached by someone who ended up in prison for abusing children. He coached me through the fledgling years of my badminton career, both in squads and in individual sessions. I was never a victim of his and I never even heard a whisper of suspicion about him. I was lucky that I was never targeted but the recent revelations within football have made me realise just how easily child abuse can take place unreported and unnoticed within sport.

It is hard to overstate just how much power a coach holds over his or her athletes. A coach knows their athletes as intimately as anyone. They see the athlete when they are at their most vulnerable and they know exactly where an athlete’s weaknesses lie. Athletes, particularly young athletes, are told that they must respect their coach. They are told that they must do what the coach says with no dissent tolerated. But the most dangerous power that a coach holds over an athlete is the power that is undetectable. It’s the small, unheard comments to athletes who are second best that if they do this or that, they might become the best. It is the threat, spoken or unspoken, that if an athlete does not follow their coach’s orders, they will be dropped from the team. It is so easy to see how this threat, either implicit or explicit, would stop a young athlete speaking out about any abuse. After all, athletes have been dropped from teams for far less.

Throughout my career, I undertook regimens that my coach instructed me to do that I didn’t want to. Even when I was a fully-fledged adult in my twenties, had a wealth of experience behind me and was the number one player in Britain, I did particular sessions or certain exercises that I didn’t want to or didn’t agree with purely because my coach had told me to. The pressure to comply was never explicit, but there’s only so many times you can resist instructions before you will get your funding cut or be dropped from the team. I knew this and these young athletes know this too; rock the boat and you’re out.

The challenge is how to remove the threat of child abuse within sport. It is an almost impossible question to find an answer to. Coaches will always have incredible power over their athletes and the nature of sport, particularly elite sport, means that this can never be eradicated. Often, and certainly at junior lever, selections are subjective. There are no world rankings to go by and few international results on which to base decisions. Every athlete knows that they are almost entirely at the mercy of their coach, particularly in team sports.

Secondly, coaches touching their athletes is almost obligatory, and it is certainly useful in teaching a skill. Should this be eliminated entirely? I can’t see that would be a positive step but even before these recent revelations were made public, there were already concerns about allowing coaches to touch their athletes, particularly underage ones. But for the vast majority of coaches who are entirely well-meaning, touching an athlete’s body when teaching a skill speeds up the process dramatically. I’ve also had both male and female coaches give me a hug when I was down about something – should that be disallowed too?

There are many aspects of sport that cannot be changed but young athletes must be taught what is appropriate behaviour from a coach and what is not. And athletes of all ages must feel assured that speaking out about anything they are worried about will be believed and acted upon. I still don’t think we’re at that stage – and that applies to many sports. But if anything positive can come out of the football sex abuse scandal, it will be to protect children further from the dangers of sport and leave them free to reap the many benefits that it brings.