Time for sporting rethink after Commonwealth debacle

8.38.00am GMT Thu 23rd Mar 2006

The Alliance Party's youth wing has called for a fundamental rethink of Northern Ireland's sports strategy after yet another disastrous day for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games, despite the outstanding hard work of its team members.

Chairman Cllr Ian James Parsley stated: "Two things are clear about the performance of the Northern Ireland team at the Commonwealth Games: firstly, we should be extremely proud of the effort put in by our competitors, who have worked extremely hard; but secondly, this hard work is simply not delivering results.

"It is clearly totally unacceptable to be behind places whose populations are similar to that of your average district council area in Northern Ireland. The competitors have done all they can - but clearly our sporting development policies lag way behind.

"When are we in Northern Ireland going to get over our obsession with buildings and fields? Every single time an issue is raised - be it sports, community development or even minority languages - the first thing people focus on is getting a building rather than getting the right people. In spending money and resources on sporting development, we need to focus on

people, not facilities.

"A regional stadium and Olympic-sized swimming pool are excellent ideas and must be developed soon while extra money is available. But the real focus must be on developing people themselves. There is no point in having world-class facilities if we have no world-class sportspeople using them.

"We must act quickly on investing in our people, otherwise our hopes of sporting excellence will degenerate into sporting embarrassment."

ENDS