Dear Ed­i­tor,

The re­cent fail­ures of our foot­ball to par­tic­i­pate in the CFU and CON­CA­CAF Youth Tour­na­ments for boys and girls in U14 and U16 is a tes­ti­mo­ny of the Na­tion­al Sport­ing As­so­ci­a­tion’s in­abil­i­ty to man­age its af­fairs. Suc­ces­sive at­tempts and calls at jolt­ing the TTFA in­to ac­tion have been sim­ply “dead ends” due to a lack of com­mit­ment to long-term pro­gram­ming.

For­mer na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick on his el­e­va­tion to the post, elect­ed pres­i­dent of North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, Ross Rus­sell, tech­ni­cal di­rec­tors Dion La Fou­cade and An­ton Corneal all in po­si­tions to du­ly ag­i­tate and pro­pose to fol­low up on their calls for Youth Foot­ball have not re­sult­ed in ac­tion.

In this re­gard time is now for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to de­clare, “Enough is too much.”

Far too much, for us to sit and ac­cept this sor­ry state of af­fairs with se­lect­ed per­son­nel to man­age our game not un­der­stand­ing their roles and du­ly per­form­ing.

The sug­ges­tions are wide-rang­ing from proven the­o­ries, and tried and test­ed pro­grammes but sore­ly lack­ing in im­ple­men­ta­tion in our coun­try. It ap­pears as though as soon as one be­comes a Sports Ad­min­is­tra­tor in our ma­jor sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, he is an au­thor­i­ty know­ing every­thing and sug­ges­tions giv­en in good faith are of­ten ig­nored.

Youth sports and long-term in­volve­ment and achieve­ment are non-ex­is­tent. Of­ten these overnight au­thor­i­ties come with a lit­tle track record of per­for­mance.

We don’t have to look be­yond our re­gion to find the re­sult of youth and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment with Ja­maica as the finest ex­am­ple.

They qual­i­fied for a World Cup, Women’s sec­ond World Cup both ahead of us, while to­day we can­not field teams in age-groups Un­der-14 and 16s.

One may be tempt­ed to start a “mi­nor league” of Youth Foot­ball and hope to be the ex­am­ple for these “overnight suc­cess” fail­ures.

There is even a need for us to ex­am­ine and ap­pre­ci­ate our past pro­grammes, large­ly con­duct­ed on com­mit­ment and vol­un­teerism with­out am­a­teurism, but a lev­el of mea­sured at­tain­ment in our Youth Foot­ball, where we were the first Caribbean na­tion to qual­i­fy for an Un­der-19 World Cup.

The Un­der-14 team of 1981 which gave us Rus­sell Lat­apy, Dwight Yorke, Sha­ka His­lop, An­cil El­cock, Wayne De Bique (and for good mea­sure Bri­an Lara) stands out as the most ben­e­fi­cial pro­gramme in Youth Foot­ball ever con­duct­ed in our coun­try. Bertille St Clair can at­test to that.

The sit­u­a­tion to­day seems to be “pay” for every­thing we do. Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve re­cent­ly re­mind­ed us of his parental in­volve­ment and in­vest­ment in him his de­vel­op­ment through which he de­vel­oped. A fine ex­am­ple in­deed.

There are oth­er such fam­i­lies known for their sup­port for their chil­dren. Imag­ine the dis­ap­point­ment of an Un­der-14 child be­ing told we are not go­ing to the tour­na­ment.

Are we so in­sen­si­tive or just an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the “Square Peg”?

The TTFA must un­der­stand that “ad­min­is­tra­tion” is to blame for every­thing, as I was taught dur­ing at a FI­FA Fu­turo Course con­duct­ed by Hugo Sal­cedo and which has great­ly in­flu­enced my life op­por­tu­ni­ties to lead.

Be it Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee or what­ev­er there is to be prop­er ac­cep­tance of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty or “do­ing the ho­n­ourable thing”.

Those of us who so un­selfish­ly served our game and coun­try can stand tall to­day and feel our ser­vice to our peo­ple in Sports, and else­where, was not in vain.

“Enough is Too Much”!

Lennox Sir­juesingh

For­mer TTFA Ad­min­is­tra­tor,

FI­FA Ref­er­ee, CFA Sec­re­tary,

Ch­agua­nas