ONE may be tennis royalty and the other may have failed in a bid to get a mini tennis court into one of the country's most deprived areas, but much common ground was shared during the broadcast interviews Judy Murray and Richard McShane gave last Friday.

 

Judy was first up, a lengthy conversation with John Inverdale filling the breach for the BBC after injury to Caroline Wozniacki brought a premature end to her semi-final at Eastbourne. And the matriarch of Scotland's greatest modern sporting dynasty seized the opportunity to demonstrate just how grounded she remains in spite of the adulation and riches heaped upon her family.

It was, of course, no surprise that she did so because of the way the Murrays have carried themselves over the years. Focused on a career that has, with his victories at Wimbledon and the US Open, proved that youngsters from Scottish state schools can still become world-class sportspeople and having perhaps learned lessons early in his career about how distracting becoming embroiled in controversies can become, Andy has perhaps been least vocal, but he has made his views clear about the need for his sport to take the chance that presents itself while so much attention is upon it.

Brother Jamie, who beat Andy to becoming the first Scot to win a Wimbledon title, has repeatedly been much more forceful in expressing the opinion that those running tennis are failing miserably in that task at a time when some serious accusations have been levelled at Scottish tennis officialdom.

Judy has meanwhile become ever-more authoritative in her public utterances, coming across as a formidable champion of her sport in her own right in spite of often having been caricatured as a pushy parent by lazy and ignorant elements in the media.

The reality is that her nurturing side has not only been obvious in her devotion to her boys, but in the way she has continued, in spite of considerable high-powered commitments - including being captain of the British Federation Cup team - to promote her sport to children in her own locale and beyond, generating a breadth of understanding of what is required, from primary-school gym hall to Wimbledon Centre Court, that is almost beyond challenge.

She consequently used this latest platform to outline the importance of creating an environment in which we can properly provide opportunities for all our youngsters to explore their talents.

The conversation was obviously largely tennis-specific, but her recommendations pertain to all sport. They included:

· Taking tennis into places where it currently does not exist and providing facilities that are public and free

· Playing more mini tennis in primary schools

· Placing focus on schools as the environment in which to give youngsters the opportunity to find out what sports capture their imaginations then showing them how to take it further

· Creating better cross-sport links when coaching youngsters in schools

· Addressing the imbalance created by the way sports facilities have receded in state schools while being maintained in the private sector

· Understanding the relationship between the number of people playing sport at grassroots level and national performance at the elite end

Further context was, however, offered later in the day when Richard McShane of the Easterhouse Phoenix project took part in a discussion on STV Glasgow which addressed the issues discussed in this space last week following the publication of a report which illustrated that sporting participation had dropped in the east end of Glasgow since last year's Commonwealth Games.

I wrote about McShane earlier this year when outlining how he was seeking to feed a surprising appetite for tennis in the housing scheme as a result of youngsters' admiration of Andy Murray, not least because they identified with the aspects of his behaviour that so appal the more easily offended.

His problem was that there was no tennis facility available in the whole of Easterhouse, an issue we subsequently returned to when both McShane and a local SNP councillor claimed that political interference had blocked their bid to have a mini tennis court installed in a local primary school.

Beyond that, McShane's wider message was that he felt the Commonwealth Games legacy had passed the east end by and he repeated that last Friday, reasserting his view that cost means the shiny new sports facilities are inaccessible to the majority of local youngsters.

In demanding that these issues be examined more closely he called for the sort of independent analysis that has been recommended here in recent weeks by others who believe we have got our priorities wrong when focusing resources on a top-down approach to sports development.

In a sporting world blighted by management-speak and psycho-babble the message from both Murray and McShane seems a simple one: that no-one can develop a passion for something to which they have not been exposed.