Northern Ireland were hoping to host matches during the Olympic football tournament but their dreams of doing so were ended after plans to build a new national stadium on the site of the old Maze Prison were dropped following a major political row.

Scotland are set to host Olympic football matches at Hampden Park in Glasgow while Wales will do the same at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff meaning that Northern Ireland will be the only country in the United Kingdom that does not see live Olympic action and Dame Mary, who represented the Province at every Commonwealth Games between 1958 and 1974, said that such an occurrence is very sad.

"It is a big disappointment that we will not be hosting any Olympic competition during London 2012," Dame Mary told insidethegames.

"We are all devastated because 75 per cent of our community voted for the Games and that was the highest proportion of anywhere in the United Kingdom.

"We feel cheated that we haven't got any major London 2012 event there.

"We would have had one of the early rounds of the soccer which would have really inspired the next generation of soccer players because they all want to be George Best.

"But we are only an hour's flight away and if people in Northern Ireland can get tickets to come then they should come to London to experience the Games.

"However, I certainly do think that a very big opportunity for Northern Ireland has been lost here."

Northern Ireland suffered a further blow of playing a meaningful role in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics after it was revealed earlier this year that a £40 million ($63 million) swimming pool in Bangor would not be opened in time for the Games.

It had been hoped that the Olympic-sized pool - the first to be built in Northern Ireland - would attract a major overseas team to train there in the build-up to London 2012 but it has now been confirmed by North Down Council that the pool will not be ready until the end of the summer in 2012.

However, Dame Mary remains hopeful that the country will still be able to bring teams to the country ahead of London 2012 with some of their other key sporting facilities.

"We are still hoping that we might be able to get some of the teams to do their London 2012 perpetration training in Northern Ireland because like I say, it is only an hour's flight away from where all the action will take place," she said.

"We have some very good facilities, particularly for hockey, and we also have a wonderful gymnastics venue which the Americans and the Romanians have trained at before so there is still that opportunity there for us."

Earlier this week, Dame Mary was named as one of the 27 Team GB 2012 Ambassadors alongside other Olympic legends such as five-time champion Steve Redgrave and double gold medallist Kelly Holmes and admits she is looking forward to the role of mentoring the younger athletes competing at London 2012.

"Any advice I can give them that will help them, I will be delighted to pass on," said Dame Mary, who has Northern Ireland's premier athletics track on the outskirts of Belfast named after her.

"A lot of them will be very nervous so I will just tell them the way I coped with competing at the Olympics which was by wiping all the external factors from my mind and just concentrating on what I was there to do."

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