Alvin Corneal: I welcome the football Commission

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised that the com­ment would have been made by cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers who were par­ty to the present state of the game.

The fact that a re­view of the cur­rent dis­play of un­solved prob­lems was recog­nised by those in charge. So I asked, why would they wish to uti­lize the same per­son­nel to form the ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee?

What else could they have done which they would like to change?

The ab­solute con­fus­ing state of lead­er­ship across the board ap­peared to re­place in­tel­li­gent dis­cus­sions in ex­change for per­son­al­iza­tion, farless than con­struc­tive to mod­ern day sports man­age­ment. FI­FA had sent their ex­perts to lec­ture to the clubs in the var­i­ous leagues in T&T, to en­sure that they will re­turn to their vil­lages and turn the tide around for a bet­ter foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Yes, there is a need for qual­i­fied per­son­nel who can take care­ful scruti­ny at the con­sti­tu­tion of the TTFA and make the as­sess­ment which ex­ist­ed with­in the rules and reg­u­la­tions.

This is not the first time that there was a need for the au­thor­i­ties to rewrite the con­sti­tu­tions of all the ma­jor sports in the years 1972-74.

What they would ob­serve in the cur­rent doc­u­ment (con­sti­tu­tion) it that it varies ap­pre­cia­bly, not so much in the or­tho­dox struc­tures which were de­fined, but the num­ber of changes which have brought the present con­di­tion to its demise.

It would take lit­tle or no time to recog­nise that the struc­tures which were writ­ten in­to the books by some of the most in­tel­li­gent men in ad­min­is­tra­tion in that era to de­tect, had ei­ther been mis­un­der­stood or brought changes which did not work.

The suc­cess­ful sports per­son­al­i­ties of the past have left com­pe­tence in foot­ball man­age­ment, much of which is no longer with us to fol­low be­fore it was de­stroyed by rule-break­ing which is the present rule of the day. It is re­placed by the use of un­nec­es­sary ar­gu­ments amount the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive which have caused nu­mer­ous ar­gu­ments in what is sup­posed to be ex­ec­u­tive meet­ings ad­dress­ing con­cerns that would in­stead im­prove the qual­i­ty of the game and sports in gen­er­al.

The sports fans are still very pa­tri­ot­ic and ex­pect­ing to wit­ness the en­ter­tain­ing dis­plays which came out at the venues of all the ma­jor sports, every af­ter­noon in the past.

I won­der how many have been in­formed of the won­der­ful dis­play of both crick­et and foot­ball when the pop­u­lar teams com­pet­ed against each oth­er on the week­end for crick­et and af­ter­noons for foot­ball.

Where were the su­per for­eign ath­letes like Har­ri­son Dil­lard, Ben John­son, and oth­ers who graced our venues to match strides with the likes of Ed Roberts, Kent Bernard, Char­lie Joseph, Hase­ly Craw­ford, Wen­dell Mot­t­ley, Ed Skin­ner, Ains­ley Arm­strong and oth­ers? They were su­per­stars in our midst.

There was no time for mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion and word bash­ing among the com­pe­tent lead­ers of the sports as­so­ci­a­tion at that time of life.

The days have gone and un­for­tu­nate­ly, in­stead of our peo­ple try­ing to fol­low a pre­vi­ous path of suc­cess in ad­min­is­tra­tion, they pre­fer to take the course of want­i­ng to fight to be­come lead­ers in these fields, when, as we now know, how in­ca­pable they have turned out to be. If you doubt me, just look at the num­bers of na­tion­al sports who are lin­ing up be­fore the courts for one rea­son or an­oth­er.

Fi­nal­ly, if the ad­vi­so­ry is need­ed, please al­low our min­istry of sports to se­lect qual­i­fied per­son­nel to re­or­gan­ise the struc­tures if nec­es­sary and fol­low their path by way of hon­esty, good man­age­ment, and cre­ate the most com­fort and ded­i­ca­tion which our sports­men and women could ever have wished.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian