How much better it would have been to deploy the money to find a site, not necessarily greenfield, nor necessarily in the South, with the potential to start from scratch.But that deal is done now, with little likelihood of Wembley National Stadium Limited, the FA’s subsidiary company, selling off the site and using the money to start again elsewhere. For the Football Association to use their pounds 120m grant from the National Lottery was a short-sighted decision, given that this vast sum merely acquired a drab, crumbling stadium in a humdrum suburban area, hemmed in by an industrial estate. These are the people who remain the prime means of decision-making when it comes to public structures in this country, people usually with initials after their name and whose inclination it is to keep the public itself out of the thinking process.Why, in the first instance, did they deem that Wembley was so central to the idea of a National Stadium? All that this location had going for it was history and tradition, most of which could have been easily consigned to the dustbin of sporting history on the occasion of a new millennium. The client is supposed to sit back, admire and stay schtum if they have any objections to the Grand Vision. We’ve already had some over-fashionable steel rigging replaced by a triumphal arch, so a further bun-fight over seating capacity, spectator eye-lines and the functionality of the track must be deeply irritating to the people behind the design.But, in this instance, my sympathy is with the architects who now have to deal with the flak produced by a whole sequence of muddled thinking by the Not So Great and the Not So Good.

For Lord Foster and his associates, it must have been similar to someone asking them to tag a Tesco supermarket on to Stansted Airport. So what went wrong, and what can be done to save not only the project itself but, more importantly, English sport’s administration from complete ridicule?

In the short term, the architects have until 15 December to come up with a viable compromise between an arena with ball games as its chief focus, and one with Olympic athletes spinning around it. This was the original brief in any case, so it will be intriguing to see how a compromise can be effected on a compromise, with the Football Association and their National Stadium company on one side and the British Olympic Association and their lobbyists on the other.
My limited experience of architects suggests they are ahead of doctors in thinking that they are shaping mankind’s destiny, so I don’t imagine that a last-minute intervention by politicians would be too welcome. “Go away and start talking to some people who know about the game.” If he accepts the offer, Cooke will be waiting.. IF A CAMEL is a horse designed by a committee, what are we to make of a sports stadium concocted by at least five different agencies? Judging by the fall-out from last week’s decision to ask for an urgent rethink of the design for the new National Stadium, the finished product would have been more likely to win the Turner Prize than the 2006 World Cup nomination.

A British league would only duplicate what should happen in Europe.” His message to Tom Walkinshaw, the bullying Gloucester chairman, who claims to have a British league signed, sealed and delivered, is stark. The problem for the clubs is managing to keep a balance, the development of a talented 16-year-old might take five years and in that time, the club might have gone down to the third division. I’m not sure how to break out of that sort of cycle.”Not by ring-fencing the top clubs or establishing a British League, Cooke believes. “Maybe money should be diverted to help a promoted club and a relegated club It’s not beyond the wit of man to devise a way through.

But why should Harlequins have the right to stay in the Premiership? What are they doing for English rugby? We’ve got the nucleus of a good domestic competition, I’d like to see an expanded European league with a knockout cup competition as well. Structure two phases of play and then play with your heads up. The problem is that British players aren’t very good at that, because not enough time is spent on decision-making all the way through the coaching system. England, he feels, should be looking at the key people in the rugby hierarchy before redesigning the domestic and international structure “I don’t think we’re that far away,” he says.