It was no small irony that Glasgow announced it would host a trimmed down Commonwealth Games in 2026 while King Charles III was touring Australia.

Australia is one of only 15 of the Commonwealth’s 74 nations and territories that still has the king as the head of state — more than double that number (36) are republics.

And while questions of whether the monarchy is a dying institution have been largely put to the side in Australia and popped in the too-hard basket for now (notwithstanding one independent senator’s protestations), the same question could be asked of the Games, which are meant to unite the Commonwealth.

Are the Games a relic of a slowly withering institution, or a genuine opportunity for the nations of the Commonwealth to celebrate their diversity in one place and give the athletes representing 2.5 billion people a chance to excel on the world stage?

Is this the end?

First the good news: Glasgow has stepped up and the Games are on, and for now the tradition that began in 1930 continues.

Yes, it will be a reduced Games, but the athletes in the 10 sports that remain — athletics, basketball 3×3, wheelchair basketball, track cycling, bowls, boxing, gymnastics, judo, netball, swimming, judo and weightlifting — will have the opportunity to strut their stuff on the world stage.

For sports like netball, the Games is the sports’ highest pinnacle.

The Games are also a chance for para-athletes to share the stage with non-disabled athletes in sports including para-athletics, wheelchair basketball, para-cycling, para-bowls, para-swimming and para-weightlifting.

This is no small thing as it gives para-athletes the chance to compete as equal participants in front of an audience that might not otherwise experience para sports.

And finally, the Games are an absolute blast.

The last edition in Birmingham presented an irrepressible feel-good picture to the world.

As an oversized mechanical bull patrolled the streets breathing smoke, volunteers sporting giant foam hands beamed as they showed spectators around and the citizens of Birmingham, and spoke with pride about how England’s second-biggest city was having its moment in the spotlight.

The vibe was brilliant, the crowds were fantastic, and the sport was exceptional.

So too the Gold Coast four years earlier, which showcased Australia’s sun and beaches and showed that smaller centres could host a large multi-sport event.

The Games benefit by not being the behemoth that is the Olympics. The tournament is a bespoke multi-sport event: It’s easier to get around, the tickets are cheaper, the traffic isn’t insane and yet the quality of sport is still world class.

They may just be the Commonwealth Games, but you can still see the likes of world record holders, Usain Bolt, Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown.

Consider that with Australia, Great Britain (which competes as separate countries at the Commonwealth Games), New Zealand and Canada, you have four of the top 12 teams from the Paris Olympics medal table.

Now the bad news

And first, the obvious: rugby sevens, cricket, hockey, diving, road cycling badminton, table tennis, squash, and wrestling are all missing out.

Glasgow will be staging just 10 of the 19 sports that were on offer in Birmingham.

Consider Australia’s hockey teams, the Kookaburras and the Hockeyroos who between them have won 11 gold medals, and for the men, every tournament ever contested.

The Games are one of the few chances apart from the Olympics where hockey steps out of the shadows.

Australia’s hockey players are understandably gutted, as are all the other athletes who look forward to the tournament, like Australian diver Sam Fricker.

“The Commonwealth Games is one of the two major events for diving,” he told Channel Nine.

“These athletes train to go and compete at those events and to have it cut from the Games completely is devastating,” he said.

“Once it’s taken out, who knows if it will come back. It could be the end of diving at the Commonwealth Games.”

And those of us who remember Robert De Castella coming from nowhere to win the 1982 marathon in Brisbane, Steve Moneghetti in 1994, or who saw Jess Stenson and Madison de Rozario storm home in Birmingham, will feel the Games just aren’t complete without the most storied of all races.

But maybe we will consider that some of the best runners in the world from Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda, didn’t bother competing at the men’s marathon in Birmingham.

Yes, Glasgow has cut its cloth so that the tradition can continue, but we all know it will feel flat despite the PR spin.

Then there’s the money

In axing the Victorian Games which were to be held in a number of regional centres, the then-premier, Daniel Andrews, cited the growing costs of the event famously saying: “I’ve made a lot of very difficult decisions in this job — this is not one of them.”

The proposed costs of the Games had blown out from an estimated $2.7 billion to more than $6 billion, according to the government.

The state’s auditor-general found $589 million had been spent on the Games that never went ahead.

That figure includes $380 million in compensation to the Commonwealth Games Federation of which $200 million has been forwarded to Glasgow.

It’s akin to a football club trading a player and then agreeing to pay part of his or her salary just to get the bulk of the money off the books.

For all its feel-good vibe, the Birmingham Games are now seen as a mistake.

Last year the city’s council effectively went into bankruptcy and is now looking at £300 million worth of cuts to services.

Facing a 760 million pounds ($1.48 billion) bill to settle equal pay claims and tens of millions to fix an IT system, critics said the Birmingham City Council took its eye off the ball – focusing on the Games rather than the essential services it needed to provide.

As many as 600 council jobs have been cut, as has almost all arts funding, 11 community centres have been sold, the streetlights have been dimmed, garbage bins are picked up fortnightly instead of weekly, and taxes are rising by 21 per cent over two years.

Remember too that the Games were only staged in Birmingham after Durban pulled out.

Last year the government of Canadian province Alberta, dropped its bid to host the 2030 games citing rising costs.

The province’s tourism and sport minister, Joseph Schow, said the estimated cost of $C2.7 billion (almost $3 billion) was a burden “too high for the province to bear”.

So where to from here?

Yes, the 2026 Games will go ahead, but with no bidder for 2030, will the games continue as a scaled-down event, can they bounce back, or is this it after almost 100 years?

“It puts it into serious doubt,” the still smarting CEO of Hockey Australia, David Pryles, said this week.

“When you’ve only got 10 sports in a Commonwealth Games and not many other countries putting their hands up for it, it’s very hard to see a path forward,” Pryles said.

If Australia and Canada think the Games are too expensive, if England’s last Games blew out and Scotland can only stage the Games on a shoestring budget, then which country will step up to host an event that demonstrably costs too much?

Increasingly the sporting world is becoming a big-ticket commercial enterprise, and the days of jolly hockey sticks amateurism are long gone.

There are more commercial options open to athletes and other multi-sport events that rival or dominate the Games.

Great Britain’s athletes compete at the European Games and European Championships; the African Commonwealth athletes at the African Games; the Asian athletes at the Asian Games, while Canada and the West Indian nations compete at the Pan American Games.

Our own Pacific Games, held last year in Samoa, have not yet taken on the same significance as those others.

It’s tempting to see the Commonwealth Games as a relic – a throwback to the British Empire Games drawing together the monarch’s far-flung colonies on which the sun never set.

But the reality is that the Games have managed to reinvent themselves for the times – less kowtowing to the mighty British Empire and more a celebration of the diversity of many nations, all played out as one great party.

But that doesn’t mean they’re here for ever.

Times change, some institutions last, while others slowly fade away.