Letters

Political football

THE EDITOR,

I WOULD like to share a moment of enlightenment experienced recently, for I like many others had been waiting for an explanation on the issue of Crenston Boxhill's secondment to the Jamaica Football Federation at the taxpayers' expense.

It finally came on Sunday night when I, like the rest of the football community, was sharing in the grief of the untimely passing of one of our own.

During the television news and sports on Sunday, April 17, 2005, I saw the president of the JFF present at a political party conference amongst delegates to elect a party candidate in central Manchester; the conference was held earlier in the day.

These are the same delegates I assume who will elect the party president. Later in the same broadcast devoted football personalities were shown gathered at the Cargill's family home offering comfort to the bereaved for their loss suffered the day before.

The juxtaposition of the two scenes on television brought the explanation I had been awaiting on the issue of secondment as well as many other issues that were unclear in my mind. I now know who serves which God and better understand what is to be the faith of football and sports in Jamaica.

Until that moment my own naivety had allowed me to believe that football leadership was free of political bearing, but it is now clear that from the start, like-minded persons had orchestrated the ascension of some to the headship of football, but still I ask, what doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Whatever the answer to that question is, I hope that all the volunteers in football who are inspired by the current path can carry on in the name of whatever, because surely, in the wake of that obvious display, the attrition of those in football who require a different standard has begun.

I am, etc.,

C. BAILEY

Stony Hill, St. Andrew