They call him "Mr Heineken" because he gets to the parts others cannot reach. For almost 17 years, Geoff Thompson has done more than anyone in Britain to make sport an antidote to the culture of guns and gangs in troubled areas such as Manchester's Moss Side and Liverpool's Toxteth.

The work of the five times ex-world karate champion's Youth Charter has been largely unheralded and only superficially funded, but its contribution to keeping kids off the street through sport has been immense. Thompson, its executive chairman, has seen what can be achieved in deprived areas and believes it can - and should- be extended to the rest of the country. But is anyone up there listening?

He is not hard go hear. Not to be confused with the other Geoff Thomson -  the "Invisible Man" who chaired the FA and is now with FIFA's executive,  he is big, black and voluble. Unfortunately he has long been viewed as a loose cannon (though he seems to hit the target); someone who asks too many awkward questions. Which may be why, apart from a brief spell on the board of Sport England some years ago, ago, he seems to be regularly overlooked when it come to appointments  where his obvious talents could be employed advantageously. 

Thompson’s Moss Side story began in 1993 when he started the Youth Charter following the gunning down in Manchester of a 14-year-old Afro-Caribbean kid. "I can accept losing medals but I cannot accept losing lives," he says. He has always believed sport is an intrinsic part of the rehabilitation process, helping to set up sports programmes in a dozen prisons and young offenders' institutions.

He says he finds it hard to see so much potential sporting talent "banged up". "The sad thing is that most do not have the option to get involved further in the sort of programmes that inspired them while they were inside. But at least sport gives them a chance. If you use its unifying power in the widest social and cultural sense you start to find some of the answers."

In the jails and on the streets they look up to him, affording him the respect he surely deserves from the top brass in sports administration. Successive Sports Ministers have promised they would find a worthwhile national role for him, but none have materialised. However there are hopes that the present incumbent, Hugh Robertson, a decent guy who knows the value of such commitment, will come up with something.

Having watched the 52-year-old Thompson (pictured) at work over the years it is evident he has more street cred than other sports administrators, by a distance. Ironically, he originates from the new Olympic heartland of Hackney but so far 2012 has not formally embraced him. In view of Seb Coe's vision of sport as a legacy for youth and the community, that almost seems a crime in itself.

And scanning down the list of appointees to the sports quangos, I find it hard to believe there is anyone more in touch with sport at community level.

Yet he continues to be ignored as someone who could greatly assist the so far less than successful efforts to take sport into the increasingly mean streets as an antidote to youth crime. At least the ambassadorial credentials of the man who, almostb single-handedly, runs the Manchester-based Youth Charter on a shoestring have been recognised in academia by an honorary doctorate of laws from Roehampton University. 

UK Sport’s appointment of one-time netball international Liz Nichols, stepping up from CEO to replace John Steele, now rugby’s head honcho at Twickenham, as chief executive, is a welcome indication that another female foot has stepped through the glass ceiling. She beat a fistful of men to the post and will work alongside chair Baroness Sue Campbell, thus giving the body which distributes Olympic cash a firm women’s grip on the purse strings.

Girl power is also increasingly evident at sport’s highest level, but how many executives hail from the ethnic minorities? Look around the annual CCPR conference and how many black faces would you see? And this is the gathering of the 200-odd constituent bodies of sport’s "parliament".

Offhand I can think only of the inappropriately-named Densign White, who chairs British Judo, and Nigel Walker, the former Welsh hurdler and rugby international who is the newly-appointed national director of the English Institute of Sport, who have senior administrative jobs in sport. Considering the huge contribution black and Asian competitors make to British sport on the track, in the ring, on the pitch and the playing field, this is hardly representative.

So when someone as as able and well-connected as Thompson comes along surely he should be valued, and not so obviously undervalued. Over to you, Hugh.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics and 10 Commonwealth Games.