BLE officials are promising a positive reaction to a report, commissioned by the Irish Sports Council and prepared by Deloitte and Touche, management consultants, on the structure of Irish athletics.

In it, there is implied criticism of the board's marketing strategy and a perceived inability to communicate adequately with those directly or indirectly involved in the sport.

Among the specific recommendations are the appointment of a salaried executive director, a slimmed down management committee, the integration of BLOE (the juvenile wing of the organisation) into a unified management structure and greater inter-action between the board and senior athletes.

"We wish to be seen as pro-active in this matter and will take on board, any change which is seen as beneficial to our sport," said BLE's public relations officer, Patsy McGonagle.

"We are already shadowing some of the issues raised in the report and that trend will be on-going in the coming weeks and months."

The report is understood to be the first of several likely to commissioned by the Sports Council whose chairman, John Treacy, is a former prominent member of BLE.

Treacy, one suspects, will readily identify with the sentiments expressed by elite athletes whose criticisms of the board are largely centred on three key points:

The reasons for non-selection for international events were not clearly communicated to athletes.

A lack of consultation with senior athletes, particularly at management committee level.

BLE's failure to capitalise on the opportunities that exist to use athletes in marketing and promotional activities.

These points, perhaps, make up an area which has occasioned the majority of the organisation's problems and fostered the perception of a confrontational body, out of touch with some of its most influential athletes.

It is true that there have been occasions when problems could have been handled more tactfully. And the failure to ratify Catherina McKiernan's entry for the world half-marathon championship in Zurich last month makes the point well.

Yet, to suggest that it is incumbent on selectors to explain their decisions to those they disappoint, is plainly trite. It doesn't happen in other sporting disciplines and there is no valid reason why it should apply specifically to athletics.

Athletes are already represented on the management committee and it is not easy to define a system whereby those engaged full-time on the professional circuit abroad, could fit easily and regularly, into any consultative process at home.

The suggestion of using high-profile athletes to boost marketing operations begs the question - to whose benefit? At a time when agents are often seen to be in effective control of the sport, their primary responsibility is to enhance their client's income - and their own - by private enterprise.

The ill-fated appointment of Eamonn Coghlan, back in he early years of the decade, notwithstanding, there is, I believe, valid reason for the appointment of a chief executive to head up a new streamlined organisation.

There will be few reservations, either, about the recommendation to reduce the management committee to 10 members, made up of three salaried officers and the remainder drawn from the voluntary sector. Paramount to the success of such a move, however, would be precise job specifications for each member of the committee.

Some of the proposals have already been discussed and rejected at Congress level and while the suggestion that BLOE should be incorporated in a new body, to be known as the Irish Athletics Federation, is realistic, one anticipates a large volume of opposition from a body which has always prized its independence in the past. As a management document, the report has merit but in the absence of a corresponding one to deal with the operational side of the sport, its value is limited. When other superficial matters are stripped away, the core of the problems currently troubling athletics, world wide, is the difficulty of imposing a professional layer on what is still predominantly an amateur sport.

In stressing the benefits to be attained by a bigger professional input, there is the inherent risk of alienating the voluntary element without which the sport simply cannot function. Marrying the two remains a challenge of formidable proportions.