Adjunct Professor Allan Hahn from the University of Canberra's Research Institute for Sport and Exercise applied for $348,000 from Sport Australia through the Move It AUS Participant grant program to run a modified boxing program at PCYCs throughout NSW, and in three Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

The "Modbox" program was based on a pilot developed over nearly five years at the Erindale PCYC in Canberra.

It was to be led by former Australian Institute of Sport and Australian boxing coach Paul Perkins, who was at the time finishing his PhD at the University of Canberra.

His PhD focused on the development of modified boxing to promote physical activity and build communities.

"We suggested that his Indigenous origins and connections would likely facilitate uptake of the program by Indigenous people in the target communities," Professor Hahn said.

The program had also run successfully in northern India as part of a sport diplomacy initiative funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

PCYC NSW, the Northern Territory Institute of Sport and the University of Canberra had all been willing to make "substantial" in-kind contributions to supplement to grant, Professor Hahn said.

"Numerous published papers and official reports were attached to the application to demonstrate the extent of our background work and provide evidence of our good track record in completing projects to the satisfaction of funding agencies," he said.

"We pointed out that many of the resources needed for the project, including a course for accrediting the modified boxing coaches and an associated training manual, had already been created."

There was even a letter of endorsement from NSW Police.

"We sent our draft application to several colleagues, all of whom thought it was compelling," Professor Hahn said.

But they learnt they had missed out on a grant on April 10, 2019 - the day before the election was called.

"This was obviously disappointing given the enormous effort that had been devoted to preparing it and to establishing the partnerships considered essential to its effective conduct," Professor Hahn said.

"Nevertheless, we accepted the decision and thought that it might have resulted from the magnitude of the funding request, or from members of the assessment panel having negative perceptions of conventional boxing."

Like the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant program, former Sport Minister Bridget McKenzie also had final say over which projects were given a slice of the $18 million Move It AUS funding pool, after an initial assessment by an industry panel.

However its program guidelines stated while the program was largely to be doled out on a competitive basis, Sport Australia may consider other projects if emerging issues were identified, or the programs' priorities were not met.

When the sports rorts scandal broke, the team behind the project began to wonder about how their grant application had been assessed.

They asked Sport Australia how they had ranked in the competitive process, and whether the body had initially recommended them to the minister for funding.

Sport Australia emailed back a week later, but avoided answering the two questions directly.

It said the cost per participant was high compared to other projects, and claimed the application did not sufficiently detail how the program would combat barriers to participation.

This was despite a substantial part of the application being dedicated to that exact subject, plus a published paper attached that had been prepared by members of the team as allowed by the guidelines.

READ MORE:

"The feedback therefore did not seem well-aligned with the content of the application, and this elevated our doubts about the nature and quality of the assessment process," Professor Hahn said.

It was later told Modbox was not recommended for approval following a thorough assessment.

"At first, this seemed quite definitive, but it has since emerged that for the Competitive Infrastructure grants the final recommendations made by Sport Australia were influenced by prior discussions with the Minister and her office and did not necessarily reflect the organisation's own independent rankings," Professor Hahn said.

Regardless of whether the project was rejected fairly or not, Professor Hahn believes there is a cloud over all Sport Australia grant programs because of the saga.

"I'd like to know if the process was fair," he said.

Sport Australia told The Canberra Times it was "satisfied a robust assessment process was used in the awarding of the Move It AUS - Participation grants".

The organisation will appear before Senate estimates on Wednesday morning.