Annus horribilis for England's underachievers in all the sports that really matter (page 1 of 2)

We dine and imbibe and gossip with our peers, rub shoulders with some of the great and the good from British sport and applaud the success of our chosen award winners. The last few years we have had much to cheer: Rugby World Cup success for England in 2003, Olympic success for Kelly Holmes and others in 2004 and The Ashes and Liverpool's Champions League trophy in 2005. But the 2006 lunch was a rather sombre affair.

Not much to cheer in British sport in 2006

This year's individual SJA awards went to a couple of aging pugilists and to that prodigiously privileged princess Zara Phillips - and the Team award went to the splendid Ryder Cup team - a European rather than a British triumph. Ms Phillips expressed the hope that more people would be inspired by her success to take up three-day eventing - and I am sure that all the young people with ponies, paddocks, stables and rich daddies will be enthused to do so. For the rest of us there was precious little to inspire us from our sporting "superstars" in 2006. The Ashes are gone; the Football World cup campaign was a disaster; England's rugby team has fallen so far from grace that they have been beaten by all and sundry and a British Golf Major or Tennis Grand Slam winner seems as far away as ever. Is this all a coincidence of under-performance, perhaps attributable to a poor alignment of the planets and will we soon bounce back? Or are there some common themes which make our sportsmen so incapable of fulfilling their potential, as individuals or as teams? Let's look at some of the reasons.

Britain's sports administrators' incompetence

Where to begin? With the Rugby Football Union where the Old Farts still rule, dithering over coaching appointments, failing to establish an effective relationship with the top clubs (who regard them with contempt) and generally frittering away their substantial resources on Twickenham rather than creating a sustainable structure for English rugby? With the England and Wales Cricket Board who in the inebriated aftermath of 2005's Ashes success arrogantly dispensed with the services of one of the architects of that success (bowling coach Troy Cooley) whilst time and again lying about the fitness and form of key players (Vaughan, Trescothick, Flintoff et al)? With the unspeakable and amoral apparatchiks of the Football Association who stuck with the expensive services of the ineffable Sven Goran Eriksson - despite it being clear that he had no coherent plan for the World Cup? Or perhaps with the most venal of them all - people like Ian Wight, the director of England's second most important tennis tournament, who has suggested, with mind-blowing snobbery, that tennis is best played by the intelligent and well-heeled middle classes rather than the great unwashed !

Lack of proper facilities for those learning the game

If little Jimmy shows a sign of talent in a sport, and his parents are minded to make the effort to try and develop that talent and have the resources to do this, then they can probably find a way. But if Jimmy's chances have to be left to his state school, especially one in the inner cities, it is highly unlikely that anyone will have the ability to spot his potential - and it is almost certain that his school will have little time for sport in its curriculum and little in the way of sporting facilities. What if Jimmy is a budding Roger Federer (who stared playing tennis at school at the age of six)? The chances are that there won't be a tennis court for miles around - and that no one will ever think to put a racquet in his hands.