Brailsford has been the most overplayed hand in British sport

WE KNEW the Football Association were really intent on England winning the 2014 World Cup, because Steve Peters turned up.

He had been British Cycling’s psychiatrist since 2005, and nine years later it was impossible to be taken seriously in British sport without a graduate from Sir Dave Brailsford’s academy on the firm.

It was much the same in the build-up to the 2015 Rugby World Cup when the RFU employed Matt Parker, formerly cycling’s head of marginal gains, to boost the chances of Stuart Lancaster’s team.

Of course, back then, we thought marginal gains meant transporting hypoallergenic mattresses around the French countryside for a better night’s sleep, not flying in mysterious Jiffy bags full of who knows what, but the last year or so has been an eye-opener for many who bought into all this pseudo-scientific wisdom.

As we now know, Peters helped England’s footballers to be the most serenely well- adjusted squad in the departure lounge after two weeks, having been eliminated two games in, while the only marginal gain that followed England rugby’s debacle in 2015 was that the situation was deemed so critical the RFU got Eddie Jones in.

So, thank you, British Cycling. An Australian now runs the rugby team, and the footballers are so without fear they were eliminated in their next tournament by the hurricane force that is Iceland. That went well.

Yet still it continues. As of yesterday, the FA were standing by Brailsford’s position on their steering committee, while the former head of British Cycling, now team principal at Team Sky, continues to be hawked around as what Sam Allardyce once called a keynote speaker.

Brailsford had a consultancy business worth in the region of £5million, while leaders in the world of British sport genuflected before him.

According to JLA, who represent Brailsford in some of his public engagements, he is an AA-rated conference performer, meaning he charges upwards of £25,000 per appearance.

What does he tell them all, his fellow coaches, or those from the world of business seeking motivation and guidance?

Does he give them the airbrushed version of cycling’s success, how he ‘doesn’t make winners, but helps them to focus and optimise their natural talents’ — or does he mention triamcinolone and what it achieves in power- to- weight ratios and how it can be served up at crucial times via manipulative deployment of therapeutic use exemption certificates, which a parliamentary committee concluded was one of the marginal gains propelling Sir Bradley Wiggins so rapidly up the side of a mountain.

The lessons to be learned from cycling’s success were consistently overplayed by other British coaches. Cycling is technologybased, so responds greatly to financial investment; it is a sport that largely, certainly in the velodrome, focuses on the individual, who is easier to steer and control than a team; and it is a sport that excludes large swathes of the world.

Not much chance of an upset from Uruguay in the cycling. Not much chance of Liberia producing the equivalent of George Weah on wheels. In a country largely without shoes, bicycles are probably in short supply.

To put cycling’s global reach into perspective, there have been 720 medals awarded in the Olympics, for men and women, and 515 have been shared between eight countries: France, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands and Russia. Those nations also account for 195 of the 241 golds.

Compare this to, say, the 800 metres in athletics where 14 distinct countries have won gold since 1964, including Mozambique, Kenya, Romania and Cuba.

there have been three olympic medals of any variety won by South america in cycling, and just one from the continent of africa. that was claimed in 1912 by a South african called Rudolph lewis. the fact he won the Iron Cross fighting for Germany in the first World War marks him out as rather atypical of the continent.

So Now we know even cycling’s famous professionalism was a front for darker methodology, what does the wider world of British sport have to learn from Brailsford and his cohorts?

By comparison to popular pursuits, cycling — or any niche sport like skeleton, really — has it easy.

there is a reason UK Sport does not want to pump their precious money for medals into volleyball and basketball. Sports that are widely played around the globe make success an arduous, lengthy process. there were more members of the International Volleyball federation in 1993 than members of FIFA.

for Great Britain to have a tilt at the volleyball podium in 2020, therefore, would be as presumptuous as China imagining it might win the next football World Cup. Gareth Southgate has opposition from countries no professional cyclist will ever venture to, or compete against.

england’s World Cup group in Russia is tunisia, Panama and Belgium. lots of good cyclists in Belgium. Wiggins was actually born there because his father, Gary, was a professional cyclist. tunisia and Panama, not so much. tunisia sent one cyclist to the 2016 olympic Games, ali Nouisri, who did not finish the men’s road race. he was only the second cyclist to have represented the country at the olympics since 1960. Panama have never competed in cycling at the olympic Games.

Success is easier to achieve, which is why it was identified by the British olympic movement in the first place. lots of medals, lots of opportunity, improves the more money you throw at it, relatively small pool of opponents.

this takes nothing away from some hugely gifted, dedicated athletes. Victoria Pendleton’s work ethic, bravery and determination during her dalliance with national hunt racing marks her out as an exceptional competitor. Yet the marginal gains that will work so well for an individual in cycling will have considerably less impact in football, where the competition is greater and the variables considerable. and that is if everything is on the level. as we now know, with team Sky, it often wasn’t.

and yet Brailsford was allowed to become the guru of British sport, the sage of sages, the coach whisperer. he knows, you know. and nobody thought to question the reality of British cycling’s success, the niche corner it occupied, how foreign it was to the sports that sought its wisdom.

even after the damning parliamentary report, the fa briefed that Brailsford was still their man, part of a group gathered to enhance success, who advise on everything from tournament preparation to managerial appointments.

What advice will he be giving, do you think? the stuff for public consumption, at £25,000 a pop, or the real story? available in Jiffy bags from good aa-rated speakers everywhere.