A Storm in a Tea Cup!

Many would like us to be­lieve such in crick­et, ath­let­ics and foot­ball be­low…heavy was the feel­ing in these sports.

Giv­en all of the con­tro­ver­sy over the last sev­en days in sev­er­al sports in the re­gion, we should not be sur­prised that heavy winds ar­rived and blew a lot apart and even opened some doors, how­ev­er, the dam­age may have been more se­vere than we thought at first.

First of all, the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my sur­face faced an over­whelm­ing down­grade in terms of prepa­ra­tion and per­for­mance both on and off the field. In what has large­ly been an un­der­whelm­ing T20 World Cup not sup­port­ed by qual­i­ty sur­faces (pitch­es) but which achieved the goal of - In­dia win­ning - and be­ing hap­py and there­fore the min­ions among the rest in crick­et can rest as­sured their fund­ing and pit­tances from crick­et rev­enue will ar­rive on time. I un­der­stand there may be even a bonus pay­ment as In­dia won.

How­ev­er, what up­set many peo­ple when the gen­er­al con­sen­sus was that the semi­fi­nal sur­face be­tween Afghanistan and South Africa was sub­stan­dard and sec­ond rate was the re­spons­es from the lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee. Sug­ges­tions such as “South Africa on­ly lost one wick­et” or “We will do bet­ter next time", sug­gest not on­ly in­ep­ti­tude but al­so ar­ro­gance and to­tal dis­re­gard for both the play­ers and pub­lic. Need­less to say, if the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) is se­ri­ous about their role, they need to hold an in­quest in­to many of the crick­et sur­faces. But and there is a But, on­ly if it re­al­ly mat­ters as the favoured team - In­dia - won.

For many of us, it was the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age done to this coun­try by the wide-rang­ing (BBC, ES­PN, for­mer crick­eters and cur­rent crick­eters) ad­verse com­ments. Some­times it is amaz­ing that per­sons who hold of­fice on these Lo­cal Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tees are un­aware of their true roles oth­er than col­lect­ing a pay cheque.

Then we had the Na­tion­al Track and Field Cham­pi­onships this week­end (Sat­ur­day 29 and Sun­day 30) where rain not on­ly de­layed events, it al­so ap­peared to dis­turb the think­ing of the or­gan­is­ers. In what can on­ly be de­scribed as murky cov­er­age, there were events be­ing staged, of which few seem to be aware, and worst yet the pub­lic was kept in the dark. So poor was the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tele­vi­sion cov­er­age that most were left guess­ing. I be­lieve go­ing for­ward the or­gan­is­ers need to em­ploy more pro­fes­sion­als to per­form some of these func­tions and not al­ways the cheap­est op­tion.

The house an­nounc­er’s voice was scarce­ly dis­cernible amidst the rain and gen­er­al at­mos­phere, it is un­cer­tain that af­ter start­ing at 3.30 pm and with the event head­ing for a 9.30 pm cli­max more was not done to ad­dress this and re­lay to the pub­lic, what was go­ing on. In fact, many per­sons left af­ter Jereem Richards' suc­cess in the 400 me­tres and there­fore missed all of the pres­ti­gious 100m events both male and fe­male cat­e­gories and al­so in both the se­nior and youth di­vi­sions. We were told that the pho­to fin­ish cam­era mal­func­tioned due to the weath­er and here­in lies my oth­er con­cern, giv­en the fact that the "cam­era" in ques­tion is called a dry weath­er ma­chine and with rain very much in the air, there should have been a prop­er fall-back plan. The truth is. there was none and that fur­ther caused de­lays. Giv­en the over­all stan­dard of our track and field as­pi­rants ap­pears to have de­creased, these de­lays did not as­sist.

Out­side of T&T, Sun­day there was the star­tling news that Ja­maica's head foot­ball coach Heimir Hall­grims­son had re­signed. Yes, re­signed. This was cer­tain­ly a shock to many, giv­en his rel­a­tive suc­cess over just about two years in charge and the quick re­lease from the Ja­maican Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion be­low said more on this.

<Hall­grims­son sev­er ties with Reg­gae Boyz>

The Ja­maica Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion has ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tion of the head coach of the se­nior men's na­tion­al team, Heimir Hall­gríms­son. The de­ci­sion was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pres­i­dent and play­ers by the coach ear­li­er to­day.

All of the above sug­gests this may have been a de­ci­sion that was quick­ly tak­en or was pend­ing based on re­cent de­vel­op­ments. On­ly two months ago, coach Hall­grims­son ap­peared to be at odds with As­ton Vil­la’s León Bai­ley and him be­ing sus­pend­ed af­ter re­fus­ing to play and then León Bai­ley re­ply­ing strong­ly about the prob­lems he faced while on na­tion­al du­ty. How­ev­er, we then heard León Bai­ley on the squad named for the Co­pa but ap­par­ent­ly, he did not turn up and we saw a re­lease from the Ja­maican Fed­er­a­tion which seemed to sug­gest rather strange­ly the fol­low­ing in their re­lease be­low pri­or to the coach's res­ig­na­tion.

<Bai­ley sus­pend­ed>

The Ja­maica Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (JFF), has made the de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend the se­lec­tion of Leon Bai­ley to the se­nior men's na­tion­al team. This de­ci­sion has been made in light of re­cent cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his com­ments and non-par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Co­pa Amer­i­ca 2024 team, de­spite be­ing se­lect­ed.

Con­sid­er­a­tion was al­so giv­en to his stat­ed de­sire to take a break from na­tion­al du­ties, and sus­pend­ing his se­lec­tion will guard against any fur­ther mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The JFF val­ues the con­tri­bu­tions of all play­ers and re­spects their in­di­vid­ual de­ci­sions re­gard­ing na­tion­al team par­tic­i­pa­tion.

We have al­so re­ferred this mat­ter to Mr. David Watt, the new­ly ap­point­ed Chair­man of the Dis­ci­pli­nary and Ethics Com­mit­tee.

If you are con­fused by this re­lease, then you are not alone, it would ap­pear every­one is not on the same page in foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion in Ja­maica. And there­in lies the prob­lem, the storm in the teacup that was made in Ice­land. brewed in Eng­land and man­u­fac­tured in Ja­maica.

The last line in an­oth­er Ja­maica Fed­er­a­tion re­lease reads: “We will now be­gin the search for his re­place­ment as the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League and the FI­FA World Cup are im­mi­nent."

Over­all, this means that the Ja­maican Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion was caught out and there­fore it may just mean that the - Dis­ci­pline - idea of the coach may not have been in sync with the Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties. This is not good and hope­ful­ly, we can hear the truth be­hind these events be­cause this is not good for the re­gion when a high­ly ac­claimed in­ter­na­tion­al coach leaves our re­gion in du­bi­ous cir­cum­stances.