SPORTRITE - Had to say sorry for this farcical stadium

With Tim Eves
TEMPTING as it is to jump on the bandwagon and start trumpeting "I told you so" about the Olympic Torch relay that has descended into a farce, happenings on the home front are, unfortunately, more poignant. It is a pity, because tuning in to the sports news this week has been like being caught in an uncensored episode of The Benny Hill Show with random interruptions of incidental violence live from Paris.
If you haven't heard of Max Mosley, the big boss man of an outfit called the FIA, then type his name into the search engine of You Tube and prepare to fall off your chair laughing. Benny Hill was a virtuoso, but this is pure genius from Mr Mosley.
There are many aspects to this story - sex, dungeons, Nazis and prostitutes - but we will just say this: Surely all Mr Mosley was doing was behaving exactly how we `the people' would expect the man in charge of the penthouse sport of Formula One racing should.
Surely orgies happen every weekend in Formula One, otherwise what is the point of driving fast cars?
As for the torch relay, well thank heavens for the French. When it comes to protesting they know how to play the game; not even the Chinese Paramilitary Police could stop an angry monsieur from extinguishing the flame ... three times.
Instead we are proud to announce a farce all of our own, The Stadium Farce, or should that be The Farcical Stadium.
Now here we have a full cast of publicly elected politicians, back-stabbing sports administrators and confused and bewildered consultants.
As far as we can ascertain, there isn't a dungeon or a prostitute in sight, although some of the tirades from power brokers involved have been a bit Nazi-like.
You will be pleased to know that most of them are being paid, by you and your neighbours via that lovely rating system, and as we speak will be gathering doltish explanations to try and sound lucid about the latest developments - or lack of.
Some of them will actually seem to be almost intelligent, others, sadly, won't. But none of them will say this: "Whoops, that was my fault" or this: "Sorry".
Nor should they really, hell, it is only a sports stadium after all, a venue that is supposed to replace that lump of decrepit concrete and corrugated iron that was built at Okara Park more than 40 years ago.
It is not us they need to apologise to anyway, it is your children and their children to come, they are the ones who won't have a sports venue of any consequence, or a venue for anything of consequence actually.
In 40 years, if the current mob of local body politicians are any indication, we will still be debating about the traffic lights at the waterfront, the lack of parking and getting all whipped up and angry about those bloody taggers.
It is unlikely Stan Semenoff will be mayor in 40 years, you never know, but it is very unlikely, so he won't need to apologise to anybody. Neither will Mark Farnsworth be chairman of the Northland Regional Council, so he won't be giving it the mea culpa either.
But someone should say sorry, so it might as well be us.
We are sorry this town won't have a sports stadium where any sport of consequence will happen. We are sorry Northland doesn't have a 50m swimming pool for athletes to train in. We are horrified cyclists are seen as nothing more than moving judder bars by motorists in this town and struggle with the fact that sport seems to be seen as a swear word by anyone elected into office in these parts.
In fact, we're gutted.