Clubs and sporting organisations in Australia have become way too dependent on government hand-outs.
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Much of it reflects a paradigm change in how funding has come to operate, while at the other end of the road it's about a cultural re-boot.
But one thing remains - for all but the major national and state sporting bodies and their constituent professional clubs the hard yards are still done by volunteers.
And they deserve to be treated with respect.
For without them there would be no grant monies worth handing out, and that includes at the top end of the food chain.
For major projects it's quite often the case of well-resourced local government partnering with equally well-resourced big sporting bodies or clubs to come up with a well-presented and persuasive case.
But for the local club or association, unless they have someone in their ranks who just happens to have a bit of know-how on the subject, it's a hard grind.
The chances are that while their project is lower profile it may be just as worthy - or even more so.
And it might tick a lot more of the boxes in terms of health, participation and engagement.
Sadly maybe less so in terms of a media opportunity unless it happens to be at a critical moment like during an election campaign.
Grant funding can be a minefield.
Best to approach it with absolute care.
There have been some shocking choices.
When the proposals in the 1980s to create the national rowing centre at Lake Barrington and to build the Silverdome in Launceston were made, Tasmanian parochialism reared its head.
Southerners were aghast that there was nothing for them.
Enter stage right the Kingborough Baseball Diamond.
All three were funded and built mostly with special Commonwealth grants.
History shows that the two original projects were well based.
The third was a white elephant from day one.
It's absolutely right that government needs to be involved in creating sport and recreation facilities, if only because it's abrogated its responsibilities in so many others areas of keeping Australians healthy and active.
But it also needs to play a bigger role because it continues to pull the rug out from beneath those sports that cannot always look after themselves.
When tobacco sponsorship was prohibited, unquestionably the right decision, state governments promised smaller sports that special health funds would cover them for lost sponsorship.
And the problem wasn't so much that smaller sports and clubs were funded by the tobacco companies - because most weren't.
The issue was that the big sports that were, quickly drew the commercial dollars towards them that were previously in the hands of the minnows.
Those sorts of issues have never gone away. Alcohol and gambling were next in line.
Potentially even those products like sugary drinks that actually do head the way of junior and smaller sports.
But it also about cultural re-adjustment.
On any drive around rural Tasmania there's a fair chance of spotting an abandoned tennis court, many fenced, paved and equipped with state or federal government grants last century.
They were a good spend at the time.
Things were different then.
Wednesday women's pennants that ended just before the afternoon school bell and mixed competition on Saturday were the fashion.
They engaged across the age groups and were the lifeblood or gathering point for many communities.
Before that there were night badminton competitions in local halls involving just about every hamlet and township in the state.
Then it was usually the requirement that the group seeking the grant had to raise at least half the funds themselves and often without the support of local government.
And in so many of those cases the source of the funds was the efforts of the backbone of most sporting and just about every other voluntary organisation in Tasmania, the Ladies Committee.
It may be politically incorrect to even mention such a concept in this day and age but we should absolutely do so.
Hats off to those tens of thousands of women who raised the money for their menfolk to spend - more often than not without a vote on how even a penny of it would be spent.