Adrian Frater, News Editor
Western Bureau

A new year has started and from a purely sporting perspective, it does not look as if 2009 is going to be a happy new year for sports in western Jamaica as the signs for football, cricket and track and field are far from encouraging.

While lesser disciplines such as basketball and netball continue to display encouraging sparks in terms of generating interest among participants and fans at the regional level, football, cricket and track and field, which all once held pride of place both regionally and nationally, are now all like insignificant oddities occupying space on the sporting calendar.

Despite having Reno FC and Village United competing in the 2008-09 Digicel Premier League, western Jamaica's football, which once produced the bulk of the national senior team, continues to be a source of major disappointment as we continue to fall further and further behind Kingston and St. Andrew Football (KSAFA) both in terms of on the field performances and general administration.

Based on the absence of any real quality in the ongoing Captain's Bakery Western Super Football League, which has former premier league contenders Seba United, Wadadah FC and Violet Kickers among the teams seeking to gain DPL qualification from this league, I seriously doubt that any of these teams will move forward unless the teams in the east, south KSAFA confederation are of equally low standing, which I seriously doubt.

greatest fear

At present, my greatest fear and concern is the possible fate that awaits Reno FC and Village United at the end of the current DPL season. Instead of seriously challenging for the title, it appears that both teams are basically battling to stave off relegation. Unless they get their act together quickly and begin to show some amount of improvement, like St. James, the entire west could find itself without a DPL contender next season.

With reigning daCosta Cup and Ben Francis cup champion St James High; and other schools in the region such as Rusea's, Frome Technical, Cedric Titus and Grange Hill all unveiling a number of exciting young players into the just concluded 2008 schoolboy football season, it is my hope that a way will be found to infuse the talent of these youngsters in a meaningful programme to rebuild the region's football.

While Trelawny, Westmoreland and Hanover all did well enough to be numbered among the teams that will participate in the top tier of the national cricket competition, in comparison to former times, the region's cricket is lacking in both quality and vitality. In fact, unless there is a major transformation in all three teams this year, it would be a major miracle if any of them end up seriously challenging for top honours.

In St James, where the parish's cricket has been at rock bottom for close to a decade, a new administration headed by top cricket umpire Cecil Fletcher was recently installed. While they have only been in place for a few weeks, there are some encouraging signs as domestic cricket, which has been absent for several years, has been revived and a competition, featuring eight teams, is now being played.

It is my sincere hope that the St James business community will rally around Fletcher and his new administration in a bid to take the parish's cricket back to a position of pride. I am absolutely convinced that if we can get our youngsters sufficiently inspired to take up the sports, cricket could well become one of the social intervention tools needed to bring stability back to some of our problem-plagued communities.

In the area of athletics, the west, which is home to international mega-stars Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Michael Frater and Merlene Ottey, has been dealt a severe blow as a consequence of the floundering by the Urban Development Corporation, which has left the Catherine Hall Stadium in Montego Bay, unavailable for the 2009 Milo Western Relays, which has since been moved to St Catherine.

After over a decade of mismanagement at the Catherine Hall facility, despite having the requisite funding, which was provided by the government of Venezuela, I hope that the government, through Sports Minister Olivia Grange, will not allow the inefficiency, which has been the premier feature of this project, to continue into this New Year.