Bill Bridge: Draper held up as culpable but his lengthy contract offers protection

THE fall-out following Britain's ignominious Davis Cup defeat by Lithuania has been amazing; rarely has the genteel game of tennis witnessed such widespread anger. It might even be that some good will emerge from the shame.

What was quite apparent at the Vitas Gerulaitis Centre in Vilnius was that the players representing the British game were not good enough; that was hardly the fault of their captain John Lloyd, their coach Paul Annacone or themselves. It was – and there now seems to be general acceptance of the fact – the fault of the Lawn Tennis Association.

Greg Rusedski is now the likely choice as new captain and Annacone will probably stay as coach but the basic problem will remain; Britain is not producing enough men capable of winning on anything approaching the highest plateau of the game. All the millions poured into tennis development down the years have yielded precisely nothing in terms of quality. Our best – sorry, only – player, Andy Murray, developed his talent under his mother's guidance, far removed from the LTA's schemes.

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Unusually for a game historically reluctant to do its washing in public, tennis people have broadcast their disquiet, none more forcibly than Mark Petchey, a former coach of Murray – the man who confirmed his loyalty to his country by opting out of the trip to Lithuania – and once head of men's training at the LTA.

It is difficult to recall any of Petchey's charges in his time with the association earning anything other than a wild card to Wimbledon but, putting that aside for a moment, there was absolutely no doubting who he holds responsible for the present disgraceful state of our tennis: Roger Draper, the chief executive of the LTA.

"Losing to Lithuania was a sad indictment of where British tennis is now," said Petchey, who went on to claim that Draper had wasted the millions handed to him every year from the Wimbledon profits in paying huge salaries to "world-class" coaches, who have had little impact on our game, and on creating the plush National Tennis Centre in Roehampton.

Petchey, of course, may have a political agenda of which we know nothing, but he was unstinting in his criticism of Draper, who rose to power four years ago in a coup which saw the departure from the LTA of John Crowther, a man whose ambition lay in increasing the uptake of tennis by children and in spreading the LTA's fortune at grass-roots level, the very policies, according to Petchey, which ought to have been pursued by Draper.

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To remove Draper now will take a degree of resolve which would appear to be beyond the nerve of the LTA Council, given that they gave him a five-year extension to his contract in 2008.

But to keep him in place would, if Petchey's argument is sound, offer the British game no chance of improving in the medium term, on the basis that Draper's eventual successor will not take over until 2013 and then will have to put his own policies in place. They, in turn, will take several years to yield results. What a mess; but at least the issues and the personalities are out in the open.

WE suffered yet another aimless, tedious performance from England but still the penny has not dropped with those who run the union game in this country.

We can blame Martin Johnson all we like for his negative approach, safety-first selection and apparent blindness to what is going on once the first whistle blows but he is in an unenviable position.

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Given that he has absolutely zero coaching qualifications and has to take guidance on every aspect of that discipline from what appears to be a bunch of yes-men incapable of producing entertaining rugby, Johnson would struggle to find a winning formula if he had at his disposal the best players from the past two decades.

Instead he has to pick his England team from a sterile, boring, ponderous Premiership. The quality and quantity of England-qualified players in the English game is depressingly low and so is the standard of rugby played at that level with coaches putting defence at the top of their agenda and strength ahead of skill. Carwyn James himself would be lost with Johnson's lot.

The first step, as always, will be the hardest. Someone in a position of authority has to go public on the fundamental problems facing English rugby which are accurately reflected in the performances of the national team. Johnson would be the ideal man to open a debate which grows more pressing by the week.

THERE will be a welcome of sorts of Jose Mourinho when Internazionale Milan arrive at Stamford Bridge for tomorrow's Champions League encounter but it would be too much to expect his team to have to face the kind of football Manchester United and Arsenal produced against AC Milan and Porto respectively in their games last week.

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The performances of both Premier League clubs were coruscating; Wayne Rooney (again) for United and Andrey Arshavin were outstanding but the quality of football they produced in virtually every area of the field was breathtaking.

If Chelsea can indeed turn on something special as the "Special One" returns then England will have an impressive presence in the last eight of the European Cup, a quality which might just worry Barcelona.

and another thing...

Any time you drop in on sports halls and other athletic facilities at our universities the numbers of students hard at work is amazing. So it was a surprise to find that Sport England, the body charged with encouraging people to take up physical activity, are to splash out 10m on persuading 100,000 more students to exercise three times a week.

It seems our next generation spend twice as much time in the bar as on the sports field with more than a quarter enjoying over 10 hours a week exercising their elbow. More than a third of first-year students had put on more than a stone since leaving school and giving up on sport.

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The zeal of our student athletes in the gyms and on the running tracks, it would appear, is matched by that of their less active colleagues for their own kind of fun as has probably always been the case.

Doubtless Sport England will monitor the progress of their campaign; hopefully they will advise us how much success they have had with our 10m – and how much of it went over the bar