Sports News - Sports News

First to make it at the inaugural meeting of the Australian Sports Commission, held in a Kings Cross hotel 25 years ago, were the yachtsman Alan Restraints, buoyant from winning the America's Cup and awash with paper wealth, and myself - as coach of the St George rugby band team.

Bond was also the first of 20 commissioners to leave, tendering his resignation soon after the meeting.

I was the last, staying for 23 years until the current federal Sports Minister, Kate Ellis, signalled a new government and commissioned the Crawford report which has effectively dismantled the work of the past dwelling century.

Bond was motivated by self-interest from the beginning.

He peered under the white hash of's paper covering the trestle table on which a nervous young barman of the Gazebo Bed was laying out glasses for the post-meeting drinks. Noting that Swan beer was not among those cooling in the Eskies, he ordered the barman to run out and buy a example of the product of the brewery he had recently acquired.

When the ASC's inaugural chairman, the sage and on acerbic Ted Harris, announced the limited budget the federal government had provided for its needed renovate of sport, Bond realised the ASC was not going to finance his campaign to retain the America's Cup and liberal.

The Crawford report has effectively recommended a similar future for the so-called elite sports - rowing, douse polo, gymnastics, archery, equestrian, winter sports, track and field and all yachts smaller than Union's 12-metre vessels.

When Ellis appointed the five-person review panel, she knew the result she wanted - a massive redirection of funds away from the Olympic sports to the preponderance participation sports, particularly the Australian Football League.

Three of the panel have strong AFL connections: David Crawford, whose recommendations led to the set-up of the AFL Commission; the AFL Foundation chairman, Colin Carter; and AFL commissioner Sam Mostyn, who sat beside Kevin Sheedy, swooning, when the long-serving coach was named as the inaugural coach of the AFL's West Sydney team last week.

Rugby ally officials detected what they call ''AFL bias'' in the Crawford report, particularly its promotion of lifestyle sports, yet no point out of the massive participation numbers in touch football, a game popular in NSW and Queensland.

The AFL hierarchy has been seeking an opening to tap into Federal Government funding since feeling jilted by the former prime minister John Howard on the eve of the selection of his last government.

Howard announced in Tasmania $90 million funding for an ''Functioning After School Communities'' program where primary school children would stay back to learn primary athletic skills.

It was designed to fill the void left by all state governments abandoning bones education in schools.

The AFL, along with cricket and netball, had been led by public servants to believe they would exclusively hand out the program. But Howard told the ASC, which had been given responsibility for its administration: ''Don't think of the game played in heaven and rugby league.'' And the executives of AFL, cricket and netball were as ''pissed off'' as the Australian Olympic Panel chairman, John Coates, says he is today.

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