Palace set to score as athletics' stately home

Inside Lines

Football, which angry British athletes claimed kicked them in the teeth when the superb City of Manchester track was ripped up after the Commonwealth Games and the venue given to Manchester City FC on a free transfer, may now be their saviour. Friday-night fervour returns to Crystal Palace next week with the Norwich Union Grand Prix, a meeting which has sold out on the strength of those stirring performances in Manchester and Munich, and it could be the springboard to giving the sport the permanent stately home it desperately seeks. Some serious talking is going on about the future of the crumbling stadium, which seemed doomed despite being the scene of much athletic majesty in past decades. The new Sport England chief executive, David Moffett, is working with UK Athletics and Bromley Council, the owners of the site, on a plan that could see total redevelopment rather than just running repairs before the lease expires in 2004. This envisages Crystal Palace as an upgraded 20,000-plus seater stadium shared with a South London football club. Crystal Palace themselves, tenants at nearby Selhurst Park, Wimbledon, whose proposed move to Milton Keynes is still being fought by their fans, or Brentford, anxious to move from Griffin Park, are possibilities. Alan Pascoe, chairman of Fast Track, the promotional arm of UK Athletics, believes the idea is feasible. "There are things going on which could have an exciting outcome," he says. "Sharing with athletics could be quite an attractive proposition for a football club in the present financial climate, and it would mean a revamped Palace would become a viable venue for major international events."

Blair gets message, sport gets a voice

Was it the success of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester that finally persuaded the Government to take sport seriously? Or was it an uncharacteristically icy blast from Trevor Brooking, the departing chairman of Sport England, who says this of the department which runs sport on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Blair: "The problem is that it is totally saturated with arts people, and over the past couple of years there has been no point in arguing the case for sport because no one understands it"? The message seems finally to have got home because the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is to have a director who is solely responsible for sport. Blair is seeking, preferably from within sport itself, "a dynamic individual to direct and lead the development of sports policy". Hitherto the job has been a three-way split with the arts and media, but the new man (or woman) in charge will trouser a salary of some £85,000-plus to bang the drum in Whitehall and Westminster for sport and, we hope, bang a few heads together, too, if the constraints of the civil service don't get in the way.

Manchester has lacrosse to bear

An intriguing question of sport from a reader. Which sport, asks Adam Sherlock, is widely played in the Commonwealth, has Commonwealth nations in three of the world's top four, has the Princess Royal as its president, has its national headquarters in Manchester, held its recent World Cup in a Commonwealth country, has its heartland of the men's game here within a 10-mile radius of the Manchester stadium, is played by thousands, is "incredibly televisual" but could not even get a look-in at the Games? Give up? It's lacrosse. Well now you know; just as you should know that another unsung sport, volleyball, has been invited to stage a prestigious European event here but cannot find anywhere to do so.

The appointment of Ipswich chairman David Sheepshanks as caretaker boss of the Football League raises a couple of points. He will be in charge while the League seek permanent replacements for chairman Keith Harris and chief executive David Burns, who both fell on their swords after criticism of their handling of the ITV Digital affair.

Yet Sheepshanks was a signatory to the original deal for which Harris and Burns paid the price. In his new temporary position he is likely to have considerable sway in who gets the key post of chief executive. Top contender Karren Brady is unlikely to be prised from Birmingham, but Howard Wells, the reformist chairman of the Central Council of Physical Recreation and one-time head of UK Sport, is favoured by several chairmen. However, Wells had a spell as chief executive at Ipswich, where he and Sheepshanks fell out. It would be a shame if Sheepshanks harbours grudges, as Wells, 56, a qualified referee and coach, seems ideally suited.

Readers of the News of the World and the Sun are being offered the opportunity to purchase the works of Roy Keane and Brian Clough, which those newspapers have been serialising respectively, "at a whopping £4 off the normal retail price".

Er, actually no. By the time postage and packing has been added, plus the cost of a hotline phone call, it is somewhat nearer a whopping £1 off. Still a bargain, though? It is if you are prepared to wait the "10 days to two weeks" after the publication date, which is the soonest they can be delivered. More convenient, surely, to trot along to the nearest WH Smith – if anyone can be bothered now all the tomes' tasty bits have been publicly disgorged.

insidelines@independent.co.uk

Exit Lines

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