The Jamaica Star :: Sport :: Olympic relief amidst football woes

Wendell Downswell says the region's leaders seem uninterested in utilising the services of their most experienced coaches. - Richard Morais

For the second time in less than three months, Captain Horace Burrell, the president of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), has publicly expressed his absolute displeasure with the rotten state of football in western Jamaica and I am in total agreement with him.

It is no secret that over the past decade, western Jamaica's football has hit rock bottom in a most embarrassing way. Things have gotten so bad that the game, once a source of great pride, is now being used to ridicule the region as it has basically lost all semblance of respect.

Open to shame

While the region is likely to get some temporary relief from our football woes with attention now switching to the 2008 Olympics Games now unfolding in China, regardless of whatever success western stars such as s Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell-Brown attain, come September when the 2008-09 football season starts, we will once again be open to shame and ridicule.

Unlike Captain Burrell, who seems unsure as to the reasons behind the decline in western Jamaica's football, I face no such dilemma. I have long been convinced that sooner or later we would end up paying the price for the inept leadership we have allowed to fester and robbed our football of its pride and nation-building qualities.

Recently The Gleaner staged a 'Sports Editors' Forum' in Montego Bay, which was attended by all the major stakeholders in the region's football. In less than half an hour, it was crystal clear to all and sundry that lack of unity, poor leadership and the absence of proper development programmes were the major problems plaguing western Jamaica's football.

For me, it was quite sobering to hear former national coach Wendell Downswell using the forum to bemoan the failure of the parishes to tackle development in a structured and unified way, while pointing out that, for reasons best known to them, the region's leaders seem uninterested in utilising the services of their most experienced coaches and former national players.

Shocking revelation

I found it almost incomprehensible when in praising The Gleaner for staging the forum, Downswell made the shocking remark that it was the first time in more than a decade that the top leaders of western Jamaica's football were meeting in such a structured way to discuss the state of the region's football.

While Captain Burrell will probably continue to get headlines for putting heat on the leaders of western Jamaica's football, I think he needs to realise that the JFF is not blameless in this sad scenario. Had the federation been demanding accountability from the west over the years, I am sure that things would not have gotten this bad.

For the longest while, the media has been the lone voice seeking to draw attention to the plight of football in the west. A few journalists have even gone as far as offering their services as board members in some parishes. Unfortunately, their attempts to help influence meaningful changes are often met with scepticism and suspicion.

Personally, I recently took a decision to end my over 20-year association with the administrative side of football. Unlike in former years, I am getting the impression that I am being embraced solely to tame my pen. I, therefore, believe it would be hypocritical of me to continue to allow myself to be used in that way.

Having experienced the recent Gleaner Sports Editors' Forum, I strongly believe that if the parishes decide to work together and share the human resources available to them; the region could once again become a major force in national football. I am therefore sharpening my pencil for a full-scale assault on those who seem hell-bent on standing in the way of progress.

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