Coromandel Valley Ramblers Cricket Club has a 95-year history, but the modest South Australian sporting organisation is a community without a clubhouse.

"We are under a structure about six metres by six metres," club president Matt Smith told a parliamentary inquiry into the allocation of sports grants on Tuesday. "A tin roof with no walls."

Mr Smith does not speak fondly of the 1950s-era toilet block on the edge of the pitch.

"Disgusting, to put it mildly," he told federal senators on the inquiry panel this week, adding that it is rarely used and keeps spectators away.

The club applied for federal funding via the Community Sports Infrastructure Grant to build a clubhouse and upgrade the toilets.

The application was given a rating of 90 out of 100, among the highest-scoring projects in terms of its need.

But Bridget McKenzie, who was then sports minister, had the final sign off. The application in the crossbench seat of Mayo, was unsuccessful.

The Coromandel Valley Cricket Club is a South Australian team in need of a clubhouse. ( Supplied )

The Morrison Government has faced months of criticism over its handling of the sports grants applications like this one, following the Auditor General's January report which found marginal seats were targeted in the lead up to the 2019 election.

The Ramblers Cricket Club was the first sporting organisation outside Canberra to have its sports grants story heard by a parliamentary inquiry set up to investigating how the money was distributed.

As well as the Ramblers, other unsuccessful South Australian sporting groups detailed many hundreds of hours spent preparing applications, and the fury they felt when a leaked spreadsheet revealed they were overlooked for programs with lower scores.

Club after club fronted the South Australian hearing on Tuesday decrying the lack of transparency and fairness during the application process.

The mood was summed up by community coach Peter Tyler from Crystal Brook Golf Club, in regional South Australia.

"From a sports person's point of view, when you enter a game the rules are clear when you start," he said.

"In the game the rules don't change anywhere from start to finish."

A law expert is questioning whether there is a legal basis for the program's guidelines, pointed out by both Mr Morrison and Ms McKenzie, to exist. ( ABC News: Ian Cutmore )

Scandal engulfs Government

The grants program has already damaged Senator McKenzie, who gave up her ministry and deputy leadership of the Nationals party after it emerged she was a member of a gun club that received grant money.

The Morrison Government has also faced claims of pork-barrelling and corruption.

But Senator McKenzie maintains she did nothing wrong in administering the grants.

She and the Prime Minister have both pointed to the guidelines for the program which state that the Sports Minister has the final say.

The legal basis for the grant decisions has already been questioned by constitutional lawyers.

Professor Geoffrey Lindell, an adjunct professor of law at Adelaide University, told the inquiry on Tuesday that according to laws affecting ministerial responsibility and public governance an agency like Sports Australia is different to a department.

"I have serious doubts as to whether [Senator McKenzie] had that authority," Professor Lindell told the inquiry.

Professor Lindell told the inquiry that while a minister can make final decisions on departmental matters they do not have the same power over an agency - such as Sports Australia - and can't overrule its decisions.

The audit office detailed communications between Ms McKenzie's office and the Prime Minister's over the process of approving the grants. ( ABC News: Matthew Doran )

Mystery grant approval

Over the past few weeks forensic questioning in parliamentary hearings and through the Estimates process has exposed a network of contact between Senator McKenzie and her ministerial staff members and the Prime Minister and his staffers.

Professor Lindell said his concerns about the administration of the program extend to the unelected political staff who were involved.

"What I say about the minister lacking authority to direct or make decisions...applies equally and perhaps even more strongly to a mere official in either the minister's office or the Prime Minister's office, or indeed even the Prime Minister himself," Professor Lindell told the inquiry.

"The cloud hangs over all of them."

It has now been confirmed that some grants were approved after the election was called, while the government was in caretaker mode and was not supposed to make political decisions.

Senator McKenzie is adamant that she did not make the changes herself. It remains unclear who did.

Professor Lindell told the inquiry he was concerned about the key role being played by political staffers, and the lack of input from public servants.

"If, in fact, we are not going to hold the minister responsible, something will have to be done about the authority of the people employed in ministers' offices," he said.

"These people are assuming more and more authority. At some point or other we can't just leave it as a vacuum, someone has to be responsible for what happens in a minister's office."