Speaking recently at the monthly Temple Club gathering at the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, to an audience of academics, public servants and students, I was pleased to see that there was total acceptance of the overlap between politics and sport. The audience was quick to seize on the recent examples of the Iranian footballers wearing green armbands during the Confederations Cup in South Africa as a symbol of their displeasure with the outcome of the Iran’s Presidential election and the chutzpah of Robert Mugabe offering training camp facilities to Brazil, Nigeria and Britain as part of their 2010 FIFA World Cup preparation, utilizing sport as a tool for gaining credibility.

My lecture, entitled Sport, Politics and Conflict from Mexico City to Lahore, explored the positive and negative links between sport and politics using the 1968 Mexico Olympics and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers in Pakistan earlier in 2009 as reference points. Whilst looking back over the past forty years I highlighted the 1972 Olympics, the 1978 FIFA World Cup, the exclusion of South Africa from international sport and the troubled relationship between the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Zimbabwe Cricket Union as instances of where sport and politics clashed. At the national level I also made reference to how the Welsh Assembly Government has used sport as a policy device for promoting improved health, economic regeneration, social justice and tourism.