WHEN the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) Normalisation Committee announced it had a new General Secretary in Trinidadian Richard Groden, the backlash was a series of articles and social commentary about his appointment.
Groden will serve in the same position he once held in the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) for 15 years before he resigned in 2013, according to the GFF Normalisation Committee and will have Diedre Davis as his assistant.
In a letter to the affiliates of the GFF, Normalisation Committee Chairman Clinton Urling said that Groden will officially take the post on March 2, while Davis will begin to serve the Federation on February 24.
The GFF was without a general secretary following the sacking of Ms Mabiola Howard in December who had taken over from Noel Adonis.
According to Urling, Groden will serve in the capacity of general secretary during the life of the Normalisation Committee which, according to FIFA, is until the end of September and during that time, Davis will be his assistant. After his (Groden) departure, Davis will take the position on a permanent basis.
But the cry of ‘foul’ by the Federation’s affiliates is on the backdrop of Groden being one of four officials who escaped punishment from FIFA over the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) bribery scandal that saw the-then GFF president Colin Klass being banned from the sport for over two years.
The Trinidadian received just a warning from FIFA’s ethics committee for his involvement in the Qatari Mohamed bin Hammam cash-for-votes scandal.
“An investigation does not assume guilt. If your employer says that someone had stolen money and they had to investigate all their staff, it doesn’t mean that all their staff are guilty Groden was never suspended by FIFA, he was cleared of all the charges,” Urling told reporters at the 704 Sports Bar yesterday, when cornered and grilled about the concerns over the hiring of the new general secretary.
He added, “We had some members of the football fraternity who were suspended and some of them are still in football, some even at the GFF remain. GS Groden was cleared so I’m not sure when we hear reprimanded.”
President of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) Horace Burrell, on October 14 2011, was banned by FIFA Ethics Committee, for six months because he was involved in the ‘CFU scandal’, so too was Guyana’s Noel Adonis who was suspended for 30 days and ordered to pay a fine of 300 Swiss Francs.
Adonis later returned to his job as general secretary until he was replaced by Ms Howard who was later sacked.
Urling explained that the Normalisation Committee reached out to FIFA and CONCACAF for help “because you look around Guyana in terms of experience with general secretaries. We’ve had two decades of basically one or two persons, acting and serving as the ‘GS’ in Guyana and we would have had to go back to say: Mr (Noel) Adonis or Mr (George) Rutherford, we want to hire you; and we said that we are going to look for someone external.”
“I heard people say that there’s no foreign general secretary anywhere in the world, but, I can take you to Barbados where Joyce Stewart is Canadian. Similar concerns were expressed there as well with her appointment, but, at the end of the day, experience and competence always trump when people start talking about nationality,” Urling said.
The GFF Normalisation Committee Chairman further noted: “This is a Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). If Clinton Urling, after my stint with the Normalisation Committee says that I want to apply for a job at one of the federations or associations in the Caribbean, I hope they don’t reject me because I’m Guyanese.”