Mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice foot­ball team and its oth­er sports teams will now have the use of an up­grad­ed foot­ball field as they look ahead to com­pet­ing in the top flight foot­ball and oth­er sport­ing events.

This af­ter the St James Po­lice Bar­racks Train­ing Ground foot­ball field was up­grad­ed to the cost of $800,000 by the Su­pe­ri­or Land­scap­ing and Gen­er­al Con­tract­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed over the last five months and was of­fi­cial­ly re­opened by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Gary Grif­fith, yes­ter­day.

The re­open­ing of the foot­ball field marked the first time the venue has been up­grad­ed thanks to the work of CoP Grif­fith since it first came in­to use back in 1965.

Speak­ing at the re­launch of the ground, a beam­ing Grif­fith said, “This can very well be a game-chang­er. This is ar­guably one of, if not the best foot­ball fields in the coun­try at this time and the on­ly way that could con­tin­ue to be is a word that we seem to be lack­ing be­cause we love to build things and not main­tain, is main­te­nance.

"Main­te­nance is go­ing to be crit­i­cal to en­sure that this re­mains a ground that can match with any ground in the world. I trav­el a lot and I can tell you that the best foot­ball field in the Pre­mier League is at the best foot­ball club in Man­ches­ter Unit­ed Old Traf­ford Ground, you will see it looks like it. This is world-class and I wish to com­mend the con­trac­tors on their ex­cel­lent job done.

"As was ear­li­er stat­ed, years ago we played hock­ey here and win­ning the toss used to be very im­por­tant be­cause you had 'up­hill' and 'down­hill'. But with a ground like this, it is not just about foot­ball as we al­so have the crick­et pitch on the in­side which is un­doubt­ed­ly one of the best in the coun­try, and in a few months when we go to the south ground, we will al­so have one of the best hock­ey fields in the coun­try and we are look­ing at putting in a 4G there as well."

Ex­pect­ing some to crit­i­cise the ven­ture, Grif­fith said, "Now the pub­lic will ask es­pe­cial­ly per­sons who have nev­er kicked a lime in their life what is the rea­son for all of this. In this coun­try, we try to look at sport as ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar, but in Eu­rope and oth­er coun­tries, the rea­son why they con­tin­ue to step ahead of us is that they look at sport as core-cur­ric­u­lar.

"And if it is we con­tin­ue to speak about de­vel­op­ment, de­vel­op­ment for young per­sons, sport is an ex­cel­lent av­enue to change a young boy in­to a man, for you to be the best that you can be. Not every­one is go­ing to be ex­cel­lent or a pro­fes­sion­al in the sport that they play but if every young per­son plays a sport it can bring all of the char­ac­ter traits that can help you from be­ing a young un­der­de­vel­oped per­son in­to a man.

"The char­ac­ter traits that you get from sport in terms of lead­er­ship, tac­tics, punc­tu­al­i­ty, uni­for­mi­ty, team-work, get­ting the job done and not giv­ing up, all of these things that you have from sport you can put that in­to you as a young man or woman in­to be­com­ing a bet­ter per­son and to help our so­ci­ety.

"We in­tend to show that polic­ing is much than what is know as pri­ma­ry crime pre­ven­tion as it al­so has to do with the com­mu­ni­ty as­pect and work­ing with the young per­sons and help­ing them turn away from a life of crime us­ing sport as an av­enue as we did with the help of na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick with the Com­mis­sion­er's Cup where we had over 100 Youth Clubs in­volved, " said Grif­fith, an avid hock­ey play­er as well.

Na­tion­al foot­ball coach and for­mer Eng­land World Cup de­fend­er Ter­ry Fen­wick al­so ex­press­ing his sat­is­fac­tion with the new-look field.

A stunned Fen­wick said, "I am a lit­tle un­fa­mil­iar with the ground at the mo­ment be­cause I had got­ten used to the long slope with a big bar­ren area and dust, but now I have to hold my hands out to the con­trac­tors as the venue now looks like Wem­b­ley or even bet­ter than Wem­b­ley.

Look­ing ahead, he said, "It's now about main­te­nance and keep­ing this field in the fan­tas­tic nick as it is at the mo­ment."

Among the oth­er guests in at­ten­dance were for­mer na­tion­al play­ers and 2006 Ger­many FI­FA World Cup duo, strik­er Stern John and de­fend­er Brent San­cho, se­nior na­tion­al in­door men's hock­ey team coach Raphael Govia, ASP Bai­ley, chair­man of the Po­lice Foot­ball Di­vi­sion, and ASP Fon­cette, vice-chair­man of the Po­lice Foot­ball Di­vi­sion, Joshua Pierre, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Po­lice Sports Club, Neike­sha Brath­waite, Events Man­ag­er Po­lice Ser­vice.