Nothing revelatory for sport in Coalition Agreement

WHAT does the Coalition Agreement - launched today by David Cameron and Nick Clegg - tell us about government sport policy for the next five years? Answer - not a lot.

UNITED FRONT: Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg listens as Prime Minister David Cameron launches the government's coalition agreement (Getty Images)

No department has less words to sum up their policies under the Liberal Conservative administration than Jeremy Hunt's newly-expanded Department of culture, Olympics, media and sport. A complex multi-facted department summed up in exactly 400 words (including its title).

First to the stating the obvious.

"We will work with the Scottish government to deliver a successful Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014, and ensure that the 2013 Rugby League and the 2015 Rugby Union World Cups are successful. We will strongly support the England 2018 World Cup bid," said the document, which was as understated in its design as Cameron and Clegg's shirt and tie combinations.

What about the Olympics?

"We will work with the Mayor of London to ensure a safe and successful Olympic and Paralympic Games in London in 2012, and urgently form plans to deliver a genuine and lasting legacy," it continued.

Again nothing too revelatory there, although London's legacy plans are already well advanced under the guidance of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the first organisation of its kind, formed nearly three years before the Games have even started.

In addition, National Lottery waste is high on the agenda - which could mean more money flowing into sport, although I wouldn't hold your breath.

While the promise of ‘an annual Olympic-style schools sport event to encourage competitive sport in schools' already exists, in the form of the hugely successful UK School Games, which will be staged for the fifth time later this year.

The Conservatives had promised sweeping changes to sports administration in their manifesto - rolling UK Sport into Sport England and also merging in the Youth Sport Trust.

But there is no mention of that seismic shift - which was opposed by the Liberal Democrats - in today's document.

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