Not all the contaminated porkies have been coming off the pig farms. For years, we've heard opportunist unionist politicos trumpet their opposition to the Maze stadium project, not on sporting nor financial grounds, as some did.

No sir. We were not, never under any circumstances, going to countenance a Shrine To Terrorism, a Hunger Strike Museum, Conflict Resolution Centre, call it what you will. They did.

And they held to ransom the hopes of a new stadium being built on the site of the old chokey, on the basis they were never going to tolerate the presence of the preserved prison hospital down the road, where the IRA hunger strikers perished.

At the same time, conveniently never mentioning the Loyalist aspect, an old UVF compound, there for all to see, when the reminder of our darkest days takes its place (as this column always said it would) on the Battlefield Tours itinerary.

A Monument to Murder, they thundered, against the Republican bit. And they weren't going to have it, just as they weren't going to stand for Direct Rule, the Anglo Irish Agreement, the Good Friday Agreement, the disbandment of the RUC and UDR... oh, and they damn sure weren't going to sit in Government with Sinn Fein. Never, never, never.

So no surprise that, in a reported accomodation between the DUP and Sinn Fein, we aren't getting the new National Stadium our sporting community craves and deserves for the semblance of normality they brought to those dark days. But we are getting a Hunger Strike Museum, brought to us by some of those same unionists. Who'd have believed it, eh?

But then this is the new Northern Ireland, governed as far as unionism is concerned, like the running joke in the Vicar of Dibley. No, No, No, No, No.. oh alright then, Yes!

It would be hilarious if the hypocrisy didn't take your breath away.

This same week, properly qualified Sports Minister Gregory Campbell, being a real life football supporter, conceded in a Stormont document that many of our sports grounds just don't come up to snuff in terms of modern day spectator facilities and safety standards.

Good man, Gregory. All I can say is — if there's money for a Hunger Strike Museum, there ought to be money for sport.

Unlike the U-turn unionists, I never had a problem with the Conflict element as part of the bigger Maze picture. Far enough from where the stadium would have risen so as to be out of sight of anyone likely to take offence and nothing like the preserved site of Hitler's 1930's Nazi rallies, bolted on to Nuremburg World Cup stadium in Germany. Far from being affronted by it, visiting fans flock in the Fuhrer's footsteps to be photographed.

I lived through the thick of things here in one of the hottest spots of all, Mid-Ulster. The Murder Triangle. I was lucky. Good mates died and others spent their youth behind the wire in the Kesh, as we called it then.

So we can't pretend it didn't happen. But life goes on and sport is in the DNA of this country.

The least Gregory can do now is lobby for as much dosh as he can lay hands on to spruce up, make do and mend, or in some cases flatten and rebuild, our existing, ancient facilities.

Its called making the best of a bad lot, particularly in the case of our national football stadium, Windsor Park, which looks like it was constructed by a blindfolded monkey with a wonky Meccano set.

Windsor, Casement and Ravenhill also suffer, from a development point of view, from their locations, in the middle of residential areas with limited motorised access and parking.

Retaining them as patched up separate entitites isn't the answer either to the sporting needs of Northern Ireland plc as a modern European state.

This country, its sportsmen and women and sportsmad population, is crying out for a showcase to which we can welcome the world, put on major events, exhibitions, sellout concerts, and dare I say it, make us money.

It would even have put us on the London 2012 Olympic map for all the world to see how far we have come from the Maze of old, while creating jobs and industry, from Belfast to Banbridge.

Instead a great opportunity has been lost as a result of political short-sightedness and opposition based on all the wrong reasons, as the go-ahead for the Hunger Strike Museum proves. It was always going to be built, stadium or no.

Those unionists who told their people they wouldn't let it happen, and sacrificed a stadium in the process, could see both decisions backfire on them at the next election. In underestimating the desire of the wider sporting community to be part of something at the Maze, the vote could certainly tell a tale.

The same politicos who told us they would never do all of the above are now asking us to believe they will revisit the National Stadium issue in four years.

I'd swallow poisoned pork quicker.