Sports Council Grants Athletics reactionIan O'Riordan looks at the implications of the Sports Council's decision to focus on fewer athletes

Whatever about the amount of money being handed out, the Irish Sports Council's announcement this week regarding grant aid appeals for the current year was badly handled and badly timed. A three-man committee was meant to be deliberating on the 38 appeals over the weekend, but that didn't prevent a Sunday tabloid jumping the gun with the headline "Sonia, Victory!" There was no effort made to deny that story because it was true.

O'Sullivan was one of 10 athletes who had their grant aid either restored or increased for 2005. Most of the athletes who appealed heard nothing at all about the outcome until the RTÉ lunchtime news on Tuesday. James Nolan, currently training at altitude in South Africa, was told later that afternoon by this correspondent. As of yesterday evening none of the 28 athletes had been notified by the Sports Council as to why their appeals had failed.

Several athletes who spoke this week had other issues about the way the appeals were handled. Most of them had left their appeal hearing confident they had made a viable case to be reinstated, or had even reached the necessary criteria. No one suggested the whole thing was a fix, but they felt the least they deserved was a proper explanation as to why their grant aid - which in many cases meant their livelihood - was cut.

European indoor 400 metre champion David Gillick had taken a day out of his routine to attend the hearings at a Dublin airport hotel last Monday week. Along with Rob Daly, Gary Ryan and David McCarthy, the 21-year-old was making the case that the Irish relay team should receive some sort of grant aid on the back of their bronze medal run at the World Indoor championships last year.

"I don't think we've been properly informed at all," says Gillick, "not even given a reason why. And that was very disappointing. We're going to have to run around 3:04 to qualify for Helsinki this summer and any sort of grant aid would have been a great boost for the relay team."

Gillick was one of 24 athletes to originally receive grant aid for 2005, less than half of the 51 athletes who got grants in 2004. His European indoor gold was classified as World Class 3, worth €19,100. Among the athletes totally cut from last year were Mark Carroll, Peter Coghlan, Karen Shinkins and Gareth Turnbull, along with Nolan and Ryan.

"I'm very grateful for what I got," adds Gillick. "I've worked hard for it, but when I look around me I do wonder. There's an athlete like Peter Coghlan whose been left with nothing after giving so much to the sport. It certainly doesn't give me great belief in the system. I can't say what I'm going to do over the next four or five years, but I'd hate to be told I was finished at 25."

No one is saying Nolan or Coghlan is going to win a medal in Beijing, but their discontent isn't just about the money; it's about being told your time is up, now go away. In the process, the Sports Council have got rid of Ireland's only world-class 1,500-metre runner and 110-metre hurdler.

"There definitely wasn't enough warning on this," says Gillick. "If they told us they were going to phase it out over the next year or so, that would have been different. But instead they've left athletes like James Nolan high and dry."

An obvious compromise would have been to fund the athletes until at least the end of the outdoor season. But what makes the timing even worse is that there's a European championship in Gothenburg next summer. There is no reason to suggest that the likes of Nolan, Carroll, Coghlan or Shinkins wouldn't have been in the hunt for medals in Gothenburg. Shinkins has just opened her 400 metres season with a 53.04-second clocking in Martinique, the fastest by a European this season.

Dr Niall Moyna is head of DCU's health and human performance department and an avid follower of Irish athletics. "I'd have a few problems with the grants system right now," he says. "I do think they need to be more flexible. But there is a real danger in narrowing the base the way they are, and looking after only one or two per cent of the athletes. They're talking about increasing the probability of success, but I think you have to broaden the base a lot more than that, especially when our high performance platform is still decades behind that of other nations."

The Sports Council have been quietly defending their grant awards for 2005, while also flagging more drastic changes in the years ahead.

"A review of the entire international carding scheme has just begun," says their high performance manager, Finbarr Kirwan, "and the starting point is contained in the Athens review, that we need to support the athletes that can deliver in Beijing, and also develop sustainable programmes with national governing bodies.

"We do face some difficult decisions as we go down that road. We sat down with all the governing bodies, and told them we have to get this done. We had to act now if we wanted to see the results in seven or eight years, just couldn't keep putting it off."

So they have decided to spend less in the pursuit of success. Time will tell if that was a good deal.