Chris Carter will make or break the dreams of Sussex's Commonwealth Games hopefuls today.

England's chairman of selectors will sit down with his colleagues this morning to finalise the 100-plus squad of athletes who will compete at the Games next March.

Only Claire Smithson, Gavin Thompson and Nick Buckfield have already secured their places on the plane to Melbourne while six more of the county's finest sweat on Carter's verdict.

Mick Jones, Julia Bennett, Andrew Robinson, Rachel Ogden, Tim Bayley and Joel Kidger have all put themselves in the frame over the past few months without being able to claim an automatic spot.

Now it is down to Carter and the rest of the England selectors to decide who will be jumping for joy and who will be heartbroken when the team is announced on Wednesday afternoon.

Carter, a former Olympian and chairman of Brighton and Hove City AC, said: "We have obviously got a good idea about the team we want to take but nothing has been finalised yet and there are still a few events where it is not so straightforward.

"Seventy per cent of the team will be picked within an hour but the next five hours or so will be taken up sorting out the other 30 per cent and there are one or two Sussex athletes who could be involved in those discussions.

"The case of Mick Jones is probably the best example of that and deciding whether to take him or not is probably the toughest choice we will have to make.

"He is the reigning Commonwealth champion but he is not quite up to the standard he set a few seasons ago and age is not on his side.

But he is still comfortably the second ranked hammer thrower in the country so has got every opportunity."

Smithson, Thompson and Buckfield all made sure of their places in the team by achieving the guideline qualifying standard and finishing as the top English athletes at the AAAs Championships.

Of the six others three - Jones, Robinson and Bennett - have achieved the qualifying standard and therefore have the best chance of being picked while Bayley is in with a shout due to his victory at the AAAs championships.

Ogden does not have the time or a top placing at the AAAs but could still get the nod if Kelly Holmes decides to withdraw through injury but Kidger can only be considered a long-shot.

It would be a controversial decision to deny Jones, from Crawley, the opportunity to defend the Commonwealth title he won in Manchester in 2002 at the age of 39.

But Carter is not afraid of making tough choices as he tries to restores some pride to athletics in this country after the disappointments of last year's Olympics and the recent World Championships.

"In certain events there are a lot of athletes who are capable of competing against the best in the world but in others the strength in depth is not there," said Carter.

"There has been a lot of discussion about the reasons why standards have slipped but in my opinion it has got to be down to the athletes themselves.

"We do lose a lot of good athletes because they realise it is hard work and you cannot blame them when the rewards are not great until you reach the very top.

"Claire Smithson is a great example of what you can achieve if you put the effort in. She has had to work very hard to improve and has been rewarded by making it to her second successive Commonwealth Games.

"You can blame the coaches but it is the athletes who have to do it.

When I was running we used to have world class athletes without having top coaches so it proves it can be done.

"Even though we have not done so well at recent championships I am still pretty confident we can get close to winning the amount of medals we managed in Manchester in 2002.

"At the Commonwealths there are not Ethiopians, Eastern Europeans or Americans so in certain events the opportunity to do well is quite good.

It is up to us to pick the team capable of achieving success."