The week the WRC teetered on the brink

The desire to point the finger is inevitable. Living in a blame culture like ours, somebody always has to take the blame. If I trip on a paving stone, it's not my fault for not looking where I'm going, it's the council's fault for not maintaining their slabs. So, when the World Rally Championship comes close to falling flat on its face then somebody must be to blame.

But who?

Who knew what was about to hit the fan as as 2011 season ended in Wales? © LAT

Well, it depends who you want to believe. The WRC service park has been polarised in recent weeks, with half its regulars supporting North One Sport and the other half firmly on the side of the governing body of world motorsport, the FIA.

On the face of it, it's a commercial issue that has rocked our world, therefore NOS must be at fault. The waters are muddied, however, when consideration is given to what could have possibly happened. We're led to believe that an entirely credible offer was made by a Qatari investment bank to not only sure up the WRC's coffers, but to inject the kind of cash NOS CEO Simon Long had confirmed was just over the horizon for years.

And the Qatari investor was in for serious cash. Money wasn't an issue; commitment wasn't an issue. Everything was possible. Everything, for a while, looked probable.

Sound familiar? Thought it would.

This time last year, we were listening to the same story: stacks of cash, sport on the verge of greatness, hold on tight - this thing's going stratospheric. Twelve months ago the cash was coming from Russia.

Remember him, the Russian?

In all honesty, it's the door marked Mr V. Antonov where the blame should be laid. Vladimir Antonov undoubtedly had and has fever for the sport (he's competed on rallies in a Saab), but it transpires he's also got a certain penchant for fiscal smoke and mirrors.

Antonov didn't come to the WRC to make a quick buck; he intended to build the championship at the pinnacle of the sport he loved. And that remained his intention right up until the Lithuanian authorities and Metropolitan Police came knocking to talk about a missing two hundred and something million.

North One's Simon Long believed salvation was just around the corner © LAT

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and the service park is now full of people opining on Antonov's suitability as the sport's primary investor and how they knew he was a bad egg.

So maybe both the FIA and NOS were at fault for not being diligent enough in their due diligence. Well, if that's the case then we can level that criticism at both the Premier League and the Football League as well, as Antonov's antics have also rocked Portsmouth Football Club to the core (and I never expected to be in the same boat as a bunch of Pompey fans).

It's a reasonably fair assumption that we didn't see this one coming.

The next question centres on the Qatari investor. NOS insist it was a credible bid and, having seen some of the paperwork I would absolutely agree it was making all the right noises. There was a keenness, a genuine, genuine keenness to make this deal happen from both NOS and the Middle East.

The potential investors had arranged to fly its lawyers into Europe to sign the deal this week, hurrying through its own due diligence and limitless form-filling in record time to expedite the saviour of the WRC.

But it wasn't enough.

The FIA pulled the plug by terminating NOS's contract as the global rights holder, leaving the firm effectively worthless: a jewellery box without its contents.

Why? Why on earth did the FIA whip the rug from under the feet of NOS and the 60 or so members of staff who will now be made redundant?

Legally speaking, NOS was in breach of contract when, it's reported, it failed to fulfil early television commitments. But, and here's where it gets complicated, did the FIA do all it could to help NOS achieve those early contractual obligations? NOS is adamant it didn't. And the FIA is adamant it did.

Never the twain shall meet.

The 2012 WRC kicks off in less than a week with the Monte Carlo Rally

Recriminations will now get us nowhere. The deal is done, or undone as the case might be.

Before moving on, there's one thing I'd like to moan about. Social media. I'm a big fan of new technology in our industry and as anybody who followed BBC reporter Philippa Thomas's coverage of the Stephen Lawrence case, Twitter can be a massively useful tool in getting the word out.

But, we have to be careful about the words that get out there. Hugely careful.

There has been some horrendously inappropriate, dangerous and down right stupid tweeting going out about the demise of the Monte Carlo Rally, the WRC and, probably, mother earth itself.

What's wrong with these people? Trading in tittle-tattle, these half-wits run the risk of seriously damaging the sport they are supposed to love. The power of the pen was always constricted by the long arm of the publisher, unfortunately no such common sense safety net exists in cyberspace, where anything goes.

And, once it's gone, it's all-too-soon accepted as fact.

Rant over.

It's time to move on, Monte's waiting next week. And by hook or by crook rally cars will be featuring on a television near you.

The loss of NOS is shocking. Surprising? Possibly not so much so. The firm had muddled through one of the most difficult periods in its history, lacking the kind of investment it richly deserved - that the golden deal arrived just too late is perhaps a fitting epitaph to a firm that always came close to delivering on its promises.