So Britain has a new Sports Minister. Helen Grant's background suggests she is very much the sporty type, but the question does she know anything about it? Or more pertinently, about overseeing it?

While hers seems a predictably politically correct appointment - only the second female and first black custodian of the games we play - it is also a potentially exciting one. If she proves up to the job.

The shock appointment of the 52-year-old solicitor following Hugh Robertson's elevation to the Foreign Ministry means that with the Culture Secretary Maria Miller - with whom she already works as Equalities Minister - as her boss at Department of Culture, Media and Sport ,the governance of sport here is now very much a women's world.

Women are now filling more key posts in sport than ever, and that's a good thing, though there are some dinosaurs, notably in football, who will disagree. Get real, chaps. The glass ceiling is splintering and about time too.

Presumably Robertson knows her well as she represents a neighbouring constituency in Kent. So did he recommend her for the job?

Helen Grant leaves Number 10 Downing Street after being told by Prime Minister David Cameron that she will be replacing Hugh Robertson as Britain's Sports Minister

Someone must have because as far as sport is concerned she is unknown. But not for long, for hers is a formidable pedigree.

A former judo champion and the Conservative Party's first black female MP, she has replaced Robertson in a reshuffle which promotes the dapper former Army officer to work as adjutant to William Hague as a Minister of State.

Grant's subsequent appointment comes from left field. Literally, actually, as she was once a member of the Labour Party but switched to the Tories in 2006, saying:"It was almost looking in the biscuit barrel, not liking the look of the biscuits, and slamming the lid shut."

She was later parachuted into Ann Widdecombe's safe seat in Maidstone ahead of the 2010 General Election. Last year she was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Women and Equality.

Born in London to an English mother and Nigerian father, when her parents separated she grew up in a single-parent family as the only black resident on the Raffles council estate in Carlisle for much of her early childhood, where she admitted to suffering racist abuse.

At school she was captain of the school tennis and hockey teams, and represented Cumbria in hockey, tennis, athletics and cross-country. She was also an under-16 judo champion for the North of England and Southern Scotland.

After studying law at the University of Hull, she went on to become a solicitor. She is married with two sons, one of whom is serving in the Royal Marines.

Grant's personal website still lists tennis among her hobbies, as well as attending sporting events - and she immediately used her Twitter account to highlight England's crucial World Cup qualifier against Montenegro on Friday. "I cannot wait to get started and certainly am hoping for a great result for #England against Montenegro on Friday!" she posted.

As yet we don't know which team she supports - if any. But she will have to get the political kit on soon if she is to pick up where Robertson left off in knocking heads together at the Football Association and Premier League.

But it is the fulfilment of London 2012 legacy that must remain paramount in her in-basket, together with the continued provision of adequate funding at elite and grassroots level via the Exchequer, UK Sport and Sport England.

Schools sport is also a high priority following the restoration of £150 million ($240 million/€179 million) of Government funding and we look forward to her showing the Education Secretary Michael Gove a touch of the harai-goshi should he try to renege on any Government pledges in this area

No doubt Robertson will be passing on some sage advice too. In my view, he has been outstanding in a long line of Sports Ministers, certainly in his three year tenure the best the Tories have ever sent into bat in their cricket team of incumbents. He has always played the bowling as straight as the answers he always gave the media.

Hugh Robertson has been among Britain's best ever Sports Ministers - but will not be missed by officials at the Football Association, who he has consistently criticised

Sport will miss him, all except those running English football who will be glad to see the back of him - because he has always been on theirs, labelling the football authorities as the worst-run of any in sport.

Sepp Blatter and his FIFA cronies who have been equally intransigent over the pressure he has applied for reform at the highest level will also clap their hands at his departure.

Robertson, 50, had turned down previous offers of a more senior role in Government and in his six years as Shadow Minister but this seems to be one he couldn't refuse in terms of career advancement.

It is rare for a Sports Minister to go onwards and upwards to higher office, apart from into the House of Lords (though Colin Moynihan did become Energy Minister). For most it has been a bit of a dead end job.

Now London 2012 is out of the way, has Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron decided to downgrade the importance of sport?

Now the worrying concern is that, in promoting Robertson, David Cameron appears to have demoted sport.

Grant will be a junior Minister, unlike Robertson, sharing her Under-Secretary's sports role with that of the equalities portfolio.

Does this indicate that with the Olympics done and dusted Cameron no longer sees sport as having the political and social clout of the past three years? Let's hope not.

Grant picks up the baton at a time when British sport is on a high. Her job will be to help it remain so, and get others playing it , as she has demonstrably done herself.

I suspect the personable ex-athlete will be a hit with sportsfolk once she settles in and should she emerge as capable-and feisty - as her only female predecessor, Kate Hoey, it will be a bonus.

But she will find sports politics as murky, devious and capricious as the real thing. Maybe more so.

I wish her well, and hope she proves as adept at throwing some weight around as she was on the judo mat.

Alan Hubbard is a 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 Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.