First we need to open the door and invite everybody in . . .

Senior Sports Writer

Thursday 20 September 2012

Getting out of Dunblane on Sunday lunchtime was a bit trickier than usual as the normally quiet little town was turned into what looked like a remake of the closing sequence of Field of Dreams.

Andy Murray, and his mother Judy, have called for the creation of a national tennis centre. Picture: Getty Images

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Kevin Ferrie

People were streaming into the town centre from every direction, with cars abandoned as far as three miles away as they came to pay tribute to a Scottish sporting great.

While joking about the disgraceful inconvenience Andy Murray had put me to I was, of course, thrilled by this latest evidence that, in spite of the balance of coverage in much of the mainstream media, interest in sport in Scotland goes way, way beyond football.

It is truly wonderful that Murray, particularly given his history, has played such a part in transforming the image of his home town.The question now is whether an even greater good can be done for Scottish sport by his success and he touched on that when calling for the creation of a national tennis centre, something he and his mother Judy have since discussed with the First Minister.The timing is interesting; only a few weeks ago, Cricket Scotland held a briefing where its officials explained how it was seeking Scottish government support in its bid to set up a national centre on a suitable site it hoped to share with tennis at Cramond on the west side of the capital.I could also place that in the context of my chat last week to Alan Mackin, Murray's former Davis Cup team-mate, who spoke of tennis suffering from what he described as being thought of as an "upper-class sport".All the more so because just a few days before that, John Dunlop, the chief executive of Scottish Squash, had used very similar terminology in explaining that a big part of his job is to rid squash of its elitist image. On an even more worrying note, some dreadful figures on the number of youngsters leaving primary school unable to swim were revealed at last week's Scottish Swimming Awards. My own recollection of schooldays at a Dundee state primary was that swimming was deemed a life skill that was both an entitlement and compulsory. Now, along with too many other sports, the implication is that it has increasingly become a privilege available mainly to those who can afford lessons and access to trendy leisure complexes. A combination of factors is contributing and it does not help when, as I experienced just a couple of years ago when discussing such matters with a still senior figure in the Scottish Rugby Union, there is a refusal to acknowledge that your sport is seen as elitist.On which note, it is worth noting as an aside that after all the years in which the SRU claims to have been breaking down barriers with its army of partly local authority-funded development officers, my colleague Alan Lorimer tells me that for the first time ever, no state school is in the main draw for either the under-16 or under-18 Scottish Schools Cups this season.Yet another example of that recalcitrance within officialdom is the failure of those involved in golf administration to address the damage done by the continued existence of male-only golf clubs in this, the 21st century. However, almost as unhelpful as those who refuse to see the damage they are doing by allowing the reinforcement of perceptions of their sport, correct or otherwise, is the chippy attitude of some, most particularly in the public sector, who seem almost opposed to widening the range of opportunities available to our youngsters.In my own locale, I am being told that efforts to promote cricket, in particular – for which I set up a trust some years ago aiming to introduce every local youngster to the sport – are meeting with quiet resistance somewhere between local authority level and within schools themselves.Naturally, no-one will admit to it if challenged directly, but the firm impression given is that, just as we encounter in the media, some are taking out their own prejudices on those trying to promote at least some sports other than football.It seems a great deal of work is required to bring about the culture change required to break down barriers in terms of how sports other than football are regarded. Key to that is getting youngsters playing them in the first instance. There are practical solutions, such as those put forward by administrators with some vision such as Dunlop, who believes that, rather than focus attention on counting numbers at clubs, the priority should be on providing, and promoting, facilities for casual and semi-organised use.As the disembodied voice in Field of Dreams told its creator: "If you build it, they will come." However, they will only do so if someone tells them it is there and that when they come, they will be made very welcome whatever their background.

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First we need to open the door and invite everybody in . . .

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