Jayne Dowle: Let's give our children a sporting chance of a better life

Who knows though, next year, he might give up football for rugby

league. Or cricket. Or golf, God help us. But while ever he lives and breathes sport, we will support him. It costs us a small fortune, and we're by no means rich, but with a bit of juggling, we can just about do it.

Jack is definitely one of the lucky ones. Iain Duncan Smith's think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, believes that thousands of our disadvantaged youngsters could be helped to learn discipline, self-respect and fitness through sport. But most of these children will never get the chance, through poverty, dislocated families, and parents who just can't cope with any more responsibilities.

Sometimes we take a short-cut to football training via the street where I lived as a child. We always see a group of lads, a little older than Jack, kicking a ball around on the road. Their astounding ball-skills leave even Jack lost for words. My friend Davit Khutsishvili, a former asylum seeker and Georgian international footballer, now lives in Barnsley and campaigns to make sport accessible for our poorest children. He tells me that their parents are asylum seekers too. What chance have any of them got of enjoying even half the opportunities Jack has?

If you want your children to play sport these days, you've got to be prepared to do it yourself. This means not only paying club fees, but buying the kit, putting the petrol in the car to drive them to training sessions and matches, and being able to organise your life so you can fit it all in. It is a massive commitment, and not all parents have the will or the wherewithal to do it.

No point relying on their school. The days of teachers giving up their evenings and weekends to coach teams and ferry kids to matches, are for most state school pupils, long gone, eroded under a mass of paperwork and draconian health and safety measures. And we're still living with the legacy of right-on educational thinking, which has pushed

competitive sport to the sidelines for the past 30 years, turning sports days into politically-correct farces where all must win prizes. Not to mention the sell-off of countless school playing fields by cash-strapped councils.

Again, Jack is (relatively) lucky. He has PE twice a week, provided by two endlessly-enthusiastic coaches who come in and teach everything from volleyball to hockey. They also run after-school and holiday schemes, for small fees that are still beyond the means of a lot of parents.

Sport provision at his school is improving, but there are no actual teams. It is the same all over the country. In fact, one in four children do not take part in any organised sport at all.

Recent government research also suggests that 72 per cent of young people never get a regular chance of teamwork, and 81 per cent will never play in inter-school events. When people moan that England never wins anything, well, I say that with this kind of record, it's a wonder we ever win anything at all.

Duncan Smith is working with sporting charity the Lord's Taverners, to create a long-term strategy, with sport at its heart, to develop opportunities to help children and young people. With all the threats to public funding, and demands on charitable donations, you might think that this is another do-gooding idea that won't come to anything.

In fact, you might even question whether it's worth investing in at all. In certain middle-class circles, there is a noticeable amount of distaste about encouraging kids into sport, especially football. I've lost count of the well-meaning friends who look down their noses at Jack's obsession with the beautiful game, and try to steer him towards rugger instead.

But I agree with the former Tory leader; it doesn't matter what they play, involving young people in sport is not about finding the next multi-million-pound striker. It is about giving kids the chance to find out that there is an alternative to life on benefits, anti-social behaviour, gang violence and drugs.

It teaches them respect for themselves and others, co-operation, and teamwork. It isn't a panacea for all our social ills, but even travelling to the next town for a match gives young people perspective, helping them to see how it is possible to live a different kind of life.

Any initiative with these aims deserves the support of all of us, whatever our views about the antics of John Terry. What better legacy, especially in the year of the World Cup, and with the London Olympics only two years away, than a nation which can truly boast that it offers sport for all.