Turning up and turning off a worry for Games

Inside Lines

The Commonwealth Games begin in Manchester on Thursday with a record number of 5,650 competitors and officials. But will they all be returning from whence they came? Indeed, will they even all turn up in Manchester or, like the 50-odd "golfers" from Nigeria and Ghana, leg it once they set foot on English soil? It is a matter of concern for immigration authortities who are still trying to discover the whereabouts of those Africans who had entered the qualifying rounds of The Open but failed to materialise up in Scotland after departing their homelands. Could the same thing happen in the Commonwealth Games? Officials are coy on the subject, but admit they are aware of the possibility. After all, sporting defections are not unknown. It used to happen all the time before eastern European countries became more attractive to reside in than some in the west. Incoming athletes, particularly from Africa, India and Pakistan, can expect stricter than usual scrutiny. Unlike the Olympics, Commonwealth Games accreditation does not give automatic entry to the host country; a passport or visa is required so it should be easier to keep a check on "rogue" entrants. Even so, there could be dozens who will add illegal immigration to the list of 17 sports. Perhaps of even greater concern to the organisers, as well as the BBC, are defections of another sort. With athletics, always the prime attraction of the Games, shunted forward to the first week because of the European Championships, there is a danger the second half will fall flat and become something of a turn-off for the home TV audience, especially with football warming up again.

How high-rise Taylor builds on grass roots

When a mobile telephone trilled during his speech to a heavy-duty sports gathering in London last week, Richard Caborn looked up from his notes and quipped: "If it's Tony for me, tell him to call back later." It was evidence that the sports minister is finally finding his feet, and a neat sense of humour. Actually the call was for the Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor, and as he had been newly enriched that very day by a £165,000 a year pay rise, taking his salary package to £623,227, it was probably his financial adviser on the line. Or Gordon Brown asking to borrow a few bob after his Spending Review. Taylor was attending the tenth anniversary bash of Sportsmatch, that worthy but relatively unheralded scheme whereby commercial sponsorship is matched by the Government on a pound-for-pound basis. Some £70 million has gone into 72 sports at grass roots level during the past decade with Taylor's PFA, which sponsored Wednesday's soiree, among the leading backers through the Football in the Community initiative involving a million kids.

More Muirfields in Commonwealth club?

An inaugural meeting of Commonwealth sports ministers on Wednesday will provide a timely curtain-raiser to Manchester 2002. With drugs high on the agenda, whether the positive tests on two of England's leading athletes is an untimely embarrassment will be the subject of some debate. Richard Caborn might also be expected to raise the question of social (and sexual) exclusion in certain countries where a Muirfield situation exists for women throughout sport. African ministers, notably the man from Malawi whose football team arrive here next week for a couple of matches under the Football Association's international development programme, have an even more pressing matter for discussion. The effect of Aids on sport in that continent.

Only an Irishman would have the nerve to pick one of Muhammad Ali's least auspicious fights and turn it into a book. No doubt recalling that Norman Mailer had titled his epic account of the Rumble in the Jungle simply "The Fight", Dave Hannigann goes one better. His 178-page tome on Ali's encounter with Al "Blue" Lewis in Dublin is called "The Big Fight".

Publication concides with the 30th anniversary this weekend of the non-title meeting between Ali and little-known Lewis. Published by Yellow Jersey Press at £10 it is an entertaining, if somewhat overstretched essay on something that would have been a non-event anywhere else but Dublin. And yours truly is indebted for a mention. With a couple of colleagues I arrived in Dublin to interview Ali only to be told by Angelo Dundee that he had retired to bed flu-ridden. "Can we talk to him for just five minutes," we beseeched. "No," replied Dundee. "He never speaks to anyone for less than an hour." We got our interview, a two-hour ear-bashing at his bedside.

Sport barely received a passing glance from the Chancellor in the Government's Spending Review and with all his other priorities you can't complain too much about that.

But there might well be the odd gripe this week when the Exchequer funding for sport is formally declared. We hear that while the arts, whose lobbyists have friends in high places at Westminster, are set for another nice little increase, sport's slice will remain at the present moderate portion of £34.6m. With Lottery income dwinding, that is not good news. Neither is no news of the Cunningham Review which recommended an additional £40m leading up to Athens 2004. It has gone uncomfortably quiet on that front.

insidelines@independent.co.uk

Exit Lines

Drugs are things you take when you are sick, they are not things you take to swim quicker. Ian Thorpe on why he remains pure in the water... It's too rough. Rhys Williams, hurdler son of Welsh rugby legend, JJ Williams, explains why he is not following in father's rugby footsteps... The Brits are remarkably good, on the whole, at organisation. The problem is politics. Commonwealth Games Federation president Prince Edward on the nation's lack of success in securing big events... I'd like to be an archaeologist. Mike Tyson sees his future in digging up the past.