In Belfast every wag has his day. While the spectacularly underwhelming gathering that is the Commonwealth Games got underway last week (with, incidentally, an opening ceremony two days after most of the competitions had begun - go figure) one of the wags was wondering why they had bothered to take the Games all the way to Malaysia.
"They're in the wrong place."
"What do you mean?"
"If they were going to do it right they should have taken this Mickey Mouse event to where it really belongs - Disneyland."
The Commonwealth Games has never seemed more out of step and more out of time. While football clubs were changing hands for hundreds of millions of pounds, the two-man team from Kirbati, both weightlifters, was trotting round a running track in Kuala Lumpur in a seven-hour opening ceremony of almost interminable boredom. The Commonwealth Games is like a sporting event frozen in aspic, a relic of a by-gone age. In athletics' sliding scale of prestige, the Olympic Games and the World Championships vie for top billing with the Europeans, in this part of the world at least, just about trawling in a distant third.
That leaves the Commonwealths all but nowhere and with no place to go. By the time the next Games come along in four years, they could have been even further devalued by the absence of the Australians should they decide finally to declare a republic.
Evidence of the sporting bankruptcy of the Games can be found in the debut of 10-pin bowling as a full event in Malaysia. What next? Because if a recreational activity like bowling can get recognition, international ludo or inter-continental whist cannot be far behind. In a sense the overblown pomposity of the opening ceremony last Friday provided the ideal signature note for the Games - plenty of sound and fury signifying, er, very little.
Northern Ireland has sent a 129-strong team half-way across the world to Kuala Lumpur. Some, like the boxers, travel with expectation of considerable success. Others merely make up the numbers.
Couldn't the Northern Ireland Sports Council and National Lottery grants used to pay airfares and accommodation have been put to better use in providing resources closer to home? The counterpointing of the expense of funding that Commonwealth team and the perpetual struggle for even the most basic boxing, swimming or athletics facilities back at home is an indictment of the Sports Council strategy.
Why bother to invest that little bit of extra time in putting together a co-ordinated, long-term strategy when you can just throw money at an international games meeting every four years?
Scoring points off the much-maligned Sports Council requires all the technical ability and expertise of shooting fish in a barrel. Established back in 1974 and with the stated aim of overseeing "the strategic development of sport", the Council has done precious little to fulfil that remit. Sport has developed over those 25 years but any progress can be attributed largely to the individual efforts of bodies like the Ulster Council of the GAA, the IRFU and the Irish League. The recent impact of Lottery funding has been the single most important development, but while the Sports Council has presided over all of this, it has contributed precious little.
So, in a week when the Sports Council had waved off a team to an international games of infinitesimal significance the timing of its newest campaign and the funds directed its way are apposite. "Sport Without Prejudice" is the laudable slogan spearheading a new programme to counter the sectarianism that is endemic in most of the higher profile sports here. We were told that this new approach involved a significant shift in emphasis from a traditional "non-sectarian" position to a more strident "anti-sectarian" one. The strategy will encompass presentations, seminars and publicity campaigns trumpeting the slogan "Participate, Celebrate, Tolerate".
Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to be enveloped by the sectarian fog that characterises Irish League matches on every bitter Saturday of the football season will appreciate the gesture. That sectarianism is strangling the game to the extent where the Irish League is becoming one of the marginalised sideshows of sporting life. What is being done in concrete terms to prod the football clubs, which are so attractive to the bigots, towards meaningful change.
The Sports Council has proved time and again that it is as adept as any other body here in the megaphone diplomacy that often passes for political and cultural debate. But it has yet to go beyond that and transform laudable intentions into something just a little more substantial. Part of its published remit is to "promote the good reputation and efficient administration of sport in Northern Ireland" and that has to go beyond punchy slogans on a billboard.
If the Sports Council is to salvage any credibility from its present image as a fairly comfortable, self-serving bureaucracy it needs to become not just a facilitator but also an agitator for change. Altering a stance or a slogan is just a matter of words on a page or on a poster. Adopting a more pro-active attitude is something altogether different.
In the past few years, the first few hesitant steps have been taken. Full-time administrators working under the auspices of the Sports Council have provided an element of coherence to a previously muddled situation. Efficiently organised and well-attended schemes have created a thriving level of GAA and soccer activity at primaryschool level. The playing of sport without barriers at those early ages prompts good habits and openminded attitudes that stand a fair chance of being carried into later life.
And yet those in charge of those same schemes live perpetually on their wits, constantly battling for renewal of their funding so that they can start another year's programme. They must be watching events in Malaysia with a certain degree of bemusement. Participate, celebrate, tolerate, indeed.
