There are many sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions that need as­sis­tance be­cause of their man­age­ment.

In this coun­try that is T&T, the man­age­ment of sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions leaves a lot to be de­sired.

Every­one is to blame for al­low­ing, the wrong per­sons to as­sume lead­er­ship po­si­tions in na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies.

So, af­ter read­ing the above, three dif­fer­ent ways, I be­lieve that we all can agree, that our prob­lems in sports in this coun­try, al­so lie off the field of play and not on­ly with the par­tic­i­pants as too many eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy.

As I lis­tened on Sat­ur­day to Michael Alexan­der, one of T&T’s elite box­ers who was in­jured in a mo­tor­cy­cle ac­ci­dent just over two years ago, speak of the pain and headache of try­ing to get sup­port to re­turn to what he loves, box­ing, I can on­ly shake my head in dis­be­lief.

Alexan­der is wait­ing on an op­er­a­tion on his left hand for al­most six months now and he has not re­ceived any as­sis­tance or as­sur­ance of help from - the Box­ing Board of Con­trol or the Am­a­teur Box­ing Board. In fact, as Alexan­der tells it, even his for­mer coach ap­pears to have for­got­ten him and he feels all alone.

Just for those who may not know, here is some harsh re­al­i­ty, just be­fore his un­time­ly ac­ci­dent in Jan­u­ary 2021, Alexan­der was all set to rep­re­sent this coun­try in box­ing at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Pre­vi­ous­ly this tal­ent­ed box­er had won sil­ver at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) 2018 Games and bronze at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma in 2019, and Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow in 2014, just three of his many achieve­ments.

It should al­so be not­ed that giv­en the fol­low­ing in­juries, we should all thank “God” that he is able to even con­sid­er box­ing again. Alexan­der re­port­ed­ly had a bro­ken left hand, two bro­ken ribs, and dam­age to his lungs.

My ques­tion re­mains why do we con­tin­ue to show such a lack of care for our ath­letes and al­most ab­solute dis­dain in our be­hav­iour? And it is not on­ly those or­gan­i­sa­tions but al­so SporTT (Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T) un­der which the um­brel­la that shel­ters box­ing ex­ist. Per­haps they have too much work or are too busy to no­tice what is go­ing on around them like many oth­ers.

So far it ap­pears that the on­ly as­sis­tance that Alexan­der has re­ceived has come through the Sports and Cul­ture Fund at the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter but where are the box­ing au­thor­i­ties now that he needs fur­ther help to at least co­or­di­nate such?

Imag­ine, we would have heard on Sat­ur­day that the T&T Crick­et Board en­sured as best they can with any arrange­ments that Nicholas Pooran who was in a se­ri­ous ve­hi­cle ac­ci­dent got the best as­sis­tance. And we on­ly have to look at where he is now and his achieve­ments and suc­cess both per­son­al­ly and for the coun­try to re­alise the dif­fer­ence in ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Alexan­der is not so for­tu­nate; he is an am­a­teur box­er and now at 29 close to his peak and can on­ly sur­vive on sup­port and sub­ven­tions. He is not work­ing any­where and has com­mit­ted him­self to sport, even when some give up and turn away. Which leads to the point that he says he is cur­rent­ly still ranked in his cat­e­go­ry (Light wel­ter­weight) and if that is true, then he has a pos­si­ble claim to still be re­ceiv­ing elite fund­ing. But again, that would be what is re­quired of an or­gan­i­sa­tion with­in.

Box­ing that cares for his com­peti­tors. At the mo­ment though, that is not the case. At one time be­fore his in­jury for years, Alexan­der was ranked in po­si­tion sev­en or eight, but he says he does not know why he on­ly re­ceived elite fund­ing once in his en­tire ca­reer so far. It is un­cer­tain whose fault it is, but a car­ing as­so­ci­a­tion would have ex­am­ined this.

An ob­vi­ous­ly frus­trat­ed Alexan­der men­tioned as well that for­mer T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent- Bri­an Lewis- is one of the few ad­min­is­tra­tors that call him reg­u­lar­ly hop­ing to as­sist, but Mr Lewis can on­ly do so much as the im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent.

There was a lot of emo­tion in the voice of many that called in on the day with one per­son re­lat­ing how a la­dy cried in the car when she heard Alexan­der’s plea.

Per­haps we should not be sur­prised or shocked by any of this, giv­en a video that cir­cu­lat­ed over the past weeks de­pict­ing a one-legged Claude Noel (T&T’s first World Box­ing ti­tle hold­er from 1981, when he de­feat­ed Rodol­fo "Gato" Gon­za­lez by unan­i­mous de­ci­sion over 15 rounds to bring joy to this coun­try) cry­ing out for as­sis­tance in ap­par­ent de­spair.

This Face­book video went vi­ral and cause many to raise their col­lec­tive hands, each with fin­gers point­ed in var­i­ous di­rec­tions, ex­cept to them­selves, from fam­i­ly to friends to var­i­ous ser­vice providers, all claimed or feigned ig­no­rance of the events or hap­pen­ings, thank­ful­ly we spoke with well-known and pop­u­lar To­ba­go sport­ing per­son­al­i­ty Pe­ter Granville, who trav­elled dur­ing the last week to Trinidad and specif­i­cal­ly to Claude Noel’s home in Mal­abar to check on him and re­port that he is go­ing okay but needs as­sur­ances that his over­all health sit­u­a­tion will be prop­er­ly mon­i­tored.

As usu­al, it is a cit­i­zen with sport­ing pedi­gree and class like Granville that shows, all of us, the pow­er of self­less be­hav­iour, when oth­ers who should know bet­ter sit idly by.

All of these ac­tions, cause me to say, “Shame on all of us who pre­tend to care about how sport­ing he­roes and hero­ines when they are on top of the world but once they fall out of favour or re­tire, many of us could care less". Michael Alexan­der is a stark re­minder of such.

Box­ing is not the on­ly sport like this, we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sit­u­a­tion in swim­ming when con­stant­ly the clubs in the cen­tral and south are be­ing de­nied us­age of the Aquat­ic Cen­tre be­cause there is con­stant re­me­di­al work be­ing done there and the no­tices from Sport TT gen­er­al­ly say al­ways the fol­low­ing “Tem­po­rary can­celling of train­ing at NCV (Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome) and NAC (Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre) “

It, there­fore, begs the ques­tion, of whether or not, there is a need for a re­view of the method used to fund sev­er­al of these sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­cor­po­rat­ing a sched­ule about their han­dling of Hu­man Re­la­tions (HR) in their re­spec­tive files, es­pe­cial­ly in terms of health and age.

But of course, all of the above pre­sumes, per­sons elect­ed to serve in these roles care more about the re­spec­tive sport­ing per­sons in their dis­ci­pline, as against look­ing af­ter their per­son­al or fam­i­ly (son or daugh­ter) in­ter­ests.