The time is now. The at­ti­tude and cul­ture to­wards the role of sports in our so­ci­ety have to change. It's now or nev­er!

The view that sports is just a pas­time and main­ly for "duncey peo­ple" who can't make it aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly is still a glar­ing re­al­i­ty here in Trinidad and To­ba­go and there are way too many who al­so be­lieve that sports is still some­thing that hap­pens when you can make the time.

Re­cent­ly, I was look­ing back at columns ap­pear­ing in the Trinidad Guardian since 2005 when Valenti­no Singh – the then sport ed­i­tor, in­vit­ed me to do a week­ly col­umn fo­cus­ing on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic and Com­mon­wealth sport ecosys­tem.

I have done so faith­ful­ly over the past 18 years, pro bono - might I add. Life, here on the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic gets in the way and while a few columns may have been missed for var­i­ous rea­sons, I re­alised that 900-plus columns at an av­er­age of 620 words add up to a lot of words with many repet­i­tive top­ics and themes.

Giv­en that for the ma­jor­i­ty of per­sons who can change the per­cep­tion of how sports and sports per­sons (gov­ern­ment, busi­ness own­ers/spon­sors) see sports as lit­tle more than recre­ation­al and leisure ac­tiv­i­ty, the fact must be pressed home that in mod­ern so­ci­ety, sports are big busi­ness and the com­plex­i­ties sur­round­ing sports can no longer be viewed from just an am­a­teur per­spec­tive.

The chal­lenge is, how do we in Trinidad and To­ba­go adapt giv­en that eco­nom­ic ex­perts and pol­i­cy-mak­ers re­main un­con­vinced that in­vest­ment in sports is in­deed vi­able and can be­come a sus­tain­able in­dus­try giv­en the size of the lo­cal mar­ket and keep­ing the fight go­ing ap­pears to be get­ting hard­er giv­en the eco­nom­ic and so­cial chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try.

It ap­pears as though the ‘per­ceived’ im­por­tant peo­ple in our so­ci­ety are not lis­ten­ing, not see­ing or just don't care. They say sports are im­por­tant but don't re­al­ly mean it as for many of them it is tem­po­rary en­ter­tain­ment at a par­tic­u­lar point in time - noth­ing more - noth­ing less.

On Au­gust 31, we cel­e­brat­ed our 61st an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence and we are now prepar­ing to ob­serve an­oth­er Re­pub­lic Day on Sep­tem­ber 24, the date Par­lia­ment met for the first time un­der the new con­sti­tu­tion, even though re­pub­li­can sta­tus was ac­tu­al­ly achieved on Au­gust 1, 1976.

As we com­mem­o­rate this mo­men­tous day and the sig­nif­i­cance of our sta­tus as a Re­pub­lic, it seems that self-doubt has crept back in and that our na­tion­al psy­che is buf­fet­ed by our eco­nom­ic and so­cial is­sues.

The ques­tion is: What will it take to get us back on a pos­i­tive tra­jec­to­ry?

Where are we go­ing? Where are we head­ing? When will we walk the walk that is need­ed to pull our coun­try and so­ci­ety out of the dol­drums?

Do we keep look­ing at the pos­i­tives in an ef­fort to keep our spir­its up?

What will it take to gal­vanise us in­to ac­tion? We can­not quit on our­selves and each oth­er!

Sports and peo­ple in­volved in sports need re­spect. The val­ue that sports can bring to the youth and young peo­ple needs to be ac­knowl­edged. The role sports can play in the bat­tle to turn things around in this coun­try can­not con­tin­ue to be dis­re­gard­ed or ig­nored.

The per­cep­tion of in­com­pe­tence amongst sport ad­min­is­tra­tors is just a con­ve­nient ex­cuse for cer­tain per­sons in so­ci­ety to not get more in­volved and I make that point be­cause doubts of com­pe­ten­cy aren't lim­it­ed to just sports as far as pub­lic sen­ti­ment goes, yet this doesn’t seem to be stop­ping par­tic­i­pa­tion in any oth­er sec­tor or in­dus­try.

So why then is this the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for not lend­ing more sup­port for sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and ath­letes at all lev­els and to in­val­i­date the con­tri­bu­tion that sports can make to the na­tion­al psy­che?

Sports can and do make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. Please pro­vide the re­spect, recog­ni­tion and re­ward that’s due!

Sports mat­ters!

Ed­i­tor’s Note: The views ex­pressed by the writer aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly those of any or­gan­i­sa­tion that he may be as­so­ci­at­ed with.