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This is a big week for British athletes hoping to compete for at , at the end of a month many of them may want to forget.

The Winter Olympics are less than three weeks away and, on Tuesday, the British Olympic Association will confirm almost every remaining place in the squad.

- whose British athletes - will hope their team launch is a more seamless affair.

But Tuesday is largely about Britain's skiers, with the teams for alpine, cross country and freestyle skiing, plus snowboarding, all set to be selected. And what a bleak build-up to the Games it has been for them, culminating in the news last week that .

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It's often said the British invent sports, spread them around the world, then get beaten by the rest of the world in short order.

The have taken a shortcut to the third stage. They play a sport nobody in Britain has heard of, but which is popular elsewhere - particularly northern and eastern Europe - and cannot buy a win, for two reasons.

The first is that the GB men have only been a team for 18 months. They won one early friendly against Oman, and can claim a draw against Luxembourg last October, but otherwise have found their inexperienced players routinely trounced by both international and club opponents.

The second reason is the team have barely any money with which to buy that win, after handball was hit by in January 2009. Though with some funding, a has been forced to close, and players now struggle to earn a crust on the European club circuit.

But a place at the beckons if the team can demonstrate they are competitive. They hope to start down that road at their first major tournament this weekend - by beating Finland.

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Nobody is going to pretend , on a freezing cold day in January, was a tie likely to sparkle with the fabled verve of an classic.

With both teams mired in the relegation battle, their supporters - and players, and accountants - have more pressing concerns than chasing some unlikely silverware.

That may be why just 5,335 people turned up to watch. Wigan didn't even bother opening one of their stands, for an all-Premier League clash in the FA Cup third round on what used to be one of the most important days in the domestic football calendar.

Wigan fans were not alone in finding better things to do with the first Saturday of a new decade. Half-empty stadia were in evidence across the country, from to .

Have the nation's football fans given up on the FA Cup as a meaningful competition?

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