Western Bureau

With Tom Chambers failing to show and community activist Errol Campbell stepping aside at the last moment, business-man Orville Powell was re-elected to serve a second term as president of the St James Football Association at the FA's bi-annual general meeting last Thursday night.

While it is no secret that St James' football has been on a downward spiral in recent years, it would be disingenuous, if not downright dishonest, of anyone to suggest that Powell, a first time president at the time, did not try his best and for that, deserved the vote of confidence he got for a second term.

In terms of time given and personal resources expended, Powell has probably invested more into St. James' football than all his predecessors in recent memory. On that basis, it would be difficult to argue, despite the current state of the parish's football, that he was not fully committed to doing his best.

While I wish Mr Powell well and support his call to all stakeholders to unite around the parish's football, it would be remiss of me not to remind him that our football is now a badly damaged product, which requires a major overhaul to be repaired. If Mr. Powell and his team plan to tackle the repairs head-on, they can always count on my support.

revolutionary changes

However, if it is the damaged product that Mr. Powell wants us to unite around, I can state here and now that the FA will not have my support. Our football needs fundamental, if not revolutionary changes, if we hope to get back to the glory days and that is the direction in which I am looking.

As I have been saying for a long time, too much substandard football is being played in St James, and we need to abandon this mission of quantity and get back to the days of quality. We need to get back to the days when our one senior competition had a dozen goods and not what we have today - over 40 weak teams each having one or two good players.

I believe that either through elimination or amalgamation, we need to go back to the days where communities such as Glendevon, Mt Salem, Flankers, Whitehouse, Catherine Hall and North Gully had just one senior team representing them in the parish's premier competition, which then featured twelve teams.

Back in those good old days of the 1980s and early 1990s, St James football was so good that the parish regularly had four teams competing in the NPL. At the same time, it should be noted that in our local domestic league was also so strong, that our NPL teams, while winning national titles, regularly tasted defeat at the hands of teams like Fogo United, Hornets and Glendevon.

If the new Powell team is serious about making a real difference, they need to scrap either the senior league or Division One and have one senior competition of no more than twelve teams. Division Two should be converted to an Under-19 competition and alongside the under-17, Under-15 and Under-12, serve as a nursery for the senior teams.

uncovering talent

The board needs to understand that corner leagues are reserved for recreational football, and structure football at the parish level should be primarily geared towards uncovering talent for the national programme. Players, who clearly have no future in the game, should not have the difficult-to-obtain sponsorship money wasted on them.

It is of critical importance that the FA recognises that members of the board are not the only ones who love St James football so criticism is not necessarily negative but might be a genuine desire to see things get better. Personally, when I criticise the board it is usually a case of wanting them to do better, that is why I generally mix criticisms with recommendations.

Finally, I hope this new board will do something to improve the conduct of its league director, Lilli-Mae Crawford, whose contentious style is not befitting of the public face of the organisation. No one can deny that this woman is a hard worker but she should not be allowed to be the proverbial cow that gives the milk and then kicks over the bucket.

NB. Feel free to send your feedback to adrianfrater@gleanerjm.com