麻豆社

When people failed to make a team at my school they would normally wait until the bus home before they started a whispering campaign.

The letters page of has served the same purpose over the years for athletes who have just missed out on a major event. The week after the announcement of a GB team would usually witness a lively debate about bias, favouritism and plain incompetence at the top.

But not this time - and it's not because there aren't any eyebrow-raising selections or athletes with gripes. There are still plenty of those.

It's just now you don't start whispering or writing letters, you set up a group instead.

While the rest of us were distracted by the word from chambers about a , there were controversies of a more everyday variety elsewhere in .

As highly-paid QCs debated the difference between a right and a privilege, other athletes were left wondering why they're not in the team when a slower bloke is.

What started on Sunday with a 168-word rant on every student's favourite waste of time about two mildly controversial calls by the selectors has quickly become a forum for dissent aimed at the sport's governing body.

And with looking forward to the , not to mention next month's little event in China, it could probably do without a group called "" talking about boycotts and protests at Crystal Palace this weekend.

There are now 467 members in this group (many of them athletes, a few of them of international quality, a couple of them former Olympians) and it is growing fast.

So just how did this all start? What are these causes celebres which have so incensed Britain's grass-roots scene? Who made the team and who hasn't?

The easiest of those questions to answer is the last. has made the team and (among others) has not.

Dale who? Richard what? You're right, we're not talking Dwain and Paula here.

The 27-year-old Garland is the Guernsey record holder for 100m, 200m, 400m, 110m hurdles, 400m hurdles, pole vault, long jump, triple jump and decathlon. He must be the best athlete Guernsey has ever produced.

He is also a now concentrating on the 400m hurdles.

He is not, however, our fastest 400m hurdler this year. Hamstring niggles have hampered Garland all season to leave him only our fourth fastest.

Our fastest is Yates, a 22-year-old student.

Having decided to put his law degree on hold for a year of full-time training, Yates has been taking chunks out of his personal best all season. He went under 51 seconds for the first time in June and then sub-50 two weeks later.

That was just a preamble to a startling display . Yates won in 49.50, an Olympic "B" qualifying time. He was now eligible for Beijing - eligible, but not going.

Not that Garland has taken his place, no, not all: Garland is going as the sixth man in our 4x400m relay squad.

The problem there, however, is Garland is only the this year, 0.78 seconds slower than the man with the sixth fastest time, the 21-year-old Richard Strachan.

So, to recap, you've got two young, improving runners with credible claims for a place not going to Beijing, and one older runner going despite being showing no form whatsoever and possibly carrying an injury.

This is just the start of the Facebook furore. Delve a little deeper and you start to find lots of other axes which need grinding.

Why isn't (third in the steeplechase at the trials) going? Why isn't sprinter worth an individual spot? Where is 1500m man ? And what of high jumper ?

And so on, and so on, and so on.

The problem here, of course, is that not everybody can or should go to Beijing. It isn't a nice thing to have to write, and it must be an even harder thing to judge, but the Olympics are a privilege, not a right.

The days when we would pad out our ranks with good eggs, long shots and loyal servants have passed. Quite simply, elite sport costs too much for that now.

Yates is a solid prospect and a wonderful example of what can be achieved with a new sense of purpose. But he has only run the "B" standard once. ask for more than that. It has found to its cost that athletes who scrape into the biggest show on earth often get stage fright.

The same tough rationale can be used to explain almost every other 50/50 call the selectors have had to make.

The relay case is a stranger one.

Garland has been picked because he represents a "safe pair of hands", something he has proved when it mattered. But just how important are a safe pair of hands in the 4x400m?

There is no question this is a huge factor in the 4x100m (our sprint quartet had no business if you just look at their individual times), but do quick starts, slick changes and the ability to run bends really play such a significant part in a 1,600m race with three scruffy handovers?

There is clearly something about British one-lappers and a baton. The event (a rich source of medals for us over the years) has a Ryder Cup-like capacity to turn mediocre individuals into heroic team players. But the 17th fastest man this year?!?

Garland is, by all accounts, a good bloke who works hard but I can't help wondering if one of the group's members , a member of the 4x400m squad in Athens, had a point when he told me the selectors are just opening themselves up to accusations of favouritism with picks like this.

"Athletics shouldn't be about interpretation. It's not like football. If you run the time you should get in the team," Elias said.

Is he right? Can athletics be boiled down to brass-tack objectivity like that? Is it time to scrap the selection panel and pick from the rankings? Or is a at the trials what we need?

Answers on a postcard please...or you could get with the zeitgeist and post below (or on facebook, it's up to you).