Want to meet an English athlete during the
Commonwealth Games? Keep a close eye on buskers, or anybody offering to wash
your car windscreen for a few cents. It turns out the English team of 522
competitors and officials in town for Melbourne2006 is totally strapped for
cash, having been unable to find a sponsor back home. That’s right. English
companies were so excited by the Commonwealth Games that not one was willing to
lend its brand or logo, and more to the point, its corporate dollars, towards
the cause.

The
Guardian today reveals that the English team’s costs of 3.3 million pounds
will be met grudgingly by the Commonwealth Games Council for England
(CGCE) and Sport England, both of which
are threatened with a financial crisis by the sponsorship black hole.

“It is absolutely astonishing,” Ann Hogbin, England’s chef
de mission and chief executive of the CGCE, is quoted as saying. “We hoped
we could capitalise partly on the back of the great success Team England enjoyed in Manchester four years ago and on London 2012
but that hasn’t come to fruition. For the first time I can ever remember we
have had to dip into our reserves, which we had built up over a period of time
from past appeals. That leaves us with 1 million pounds, the minimum we can survive
on. If we have to start digging into that any deeper then we are
finished.”

Those in charge don’t even think the
investment will be met with rivers of gold as the team is gearing itself for a
return of less than 100 medals (down from 166 at the Manchester Games). The Times Online (which is so excited by
Melbourne 2006 that it mentioned the yarn more than 20 stories down its sports
index), quoted Hogbin as admitting Australia would wipe the English
team, which was described as “suffering from a lack of patriotism”.

British marketing heavies who worked the
room endlessly at the big end of London
town leading into the Games came up completely dry, to the extent that they
couldn’t even find a sports apparel company willing to provide free team kit
for the competing Poms. A little-known company called Impsport has apparently
provided the kit at cost price.

Embarrassingly, the Scottish team has been
sponsored by the Clydesdale Bank and Emirates airline, while the Welsh team has
also attracted sponsorship.