Provide better facilities for our youngsters and the talent will emerge

Senior Sports Writer

Thursday 27 September 2012

Back in the early 1980s, during what was being described as the jogging boom, I was dispatched to cover the opening of a new shop in Dundee's Lochee Road.

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Kevin Ferrie

Our newspaper diary was sometimes set by a rather angry wee man who had found some sort of therapy through jogging, so was excited about the celebrity who was cutting the ribbon.

I could not really share his enthusiasm because, barring Olympic Games and my desperation to see Steve Ovett thrash Seb Coe at every opportunity, I was not that interested if there was no ball involved. The name Liz Lynch did not, then, mean much to me.

My hazy recollection is that the legendary road warrior-to-be cut a rather shy, almost demure, figure that day. I was little more forthcoming myself back then, so there was no interview as such.In years to come, though, the sight of Liz pounding the streets around our offices in the Kingsway was to become a familiar one.All these years on, neither of us could ever be accused of being short of a word or two when it comes to expressing views on Scottish sport. So, while I have still never spoken to Liz directly, it was reassuring to be reminded this week that my fellow Dundonian sees things very similarly in terms of the neglect of sport by our local, and national, politicians.Pointing to her own relatively impoverished upbringing in a Dundee housing scheme, Liz demanded, at Holyrood on Tuesday, that greater access to facilities should be made available.In that context, then, it is interesting to note that, after I wrote last week how sport in Scotland, other than football, was becoming the domain of the middle classes, there was not the usual response from the governing bodies involved.In recent years, sports organisations appear to have learned from big business by investing in aggressive public relations rather than addressing major problems, presumably because it is cheaper. This time around, though, perhaps because my evidence was drawn from a wide array of sources, there has been no official response from either government or the various agencies and governing bodies involved.While the hope must be that this is because they are finally realising there is an issue to be addressed and are now looking for proper answers rather than merely sending their rapid rebuttal units into the fray, my cynicism suggests that itself is a tactic, hoping to avoid fanning flames.However, it is one thing trying to ignore media commentators and quite another failing to listen to powerful women such as Liz McColgan who is used to pursuing goals relentlessly.The wider public is taking greater note, too, as best demonstrated in an intelligent letter sent to this newspaper by David Henderson, from Inverness (www.heraldscotland.com/sport/opinion) who writes of the need to place sport in its proper place on our priority list for public spending.He makes the point that much of this is dependent upon reigniting the passion for extra-curricular sport among teachers whose collective goodwill was destroyed with our social fabric in the 1980s.Certainly, my own interest in rugby and cricket, the main sports I have been involved in since schooldays, were stimulated by one man, a geography teacher, who was passionate about them.The timing of that recollection is personally poignant because I am expecting, tomorrow night, to renew acquaintances with Brian McEwan, the gentleman in question, for the first time in 30 years when he is my guest at Stobswell Rugby Club's 50th anniversary dinner.Many of my schoolmates who were similarly inspired by Mr McEwan are now involved with that club and while none of us ever made it anywhere near the top in sport, they have kept interest in those sports alive for further generations. Mr McEwan would, I am sure, have been appalled by the argument now pushed by some that mass participation in sport can be a barrier to elite development because it increases demand on facilities.Furthermore, as John Dunlop, chief executive of Scottish Squash, pointed out earlier this month, it is an appalling state of affairs when the Scottish Government and national sports agencies seem, as he feels was the case with his sport, to be combining to axe projects designed to take sports into deprived areas.Those observations were made at a time when the British Government is pushing through welfare reform which, it is believed, may adversely affect around a quarter of a million Scots.Inspired, as we hope most are, by the Olympics and Paralympics, how much more constructively could the time of at least a percentage of those on benefits be used if they, as well as our schoolchildren, were given free access to sports facilities between the hours of nine and five?Our first priority in this desperately unhealthy, confidence-sapped province of Scotland is to get our kids up and running, as Liz McColgan did all those years ago.Generate sufficient interest by giving teachers incentives, while providing better facilities and easier access to them, and the talent will emerge. Even if it does not, the benefit to our society of mass participation is much greater than making sure a privileged few are pampered.

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Local government

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Provide better facilities for our youngsters and the talent will emerge

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