| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Karl |
Posted - Jan 02 2004 : 9:54:24 PM
Tough times ahead for football, cricket
published: Friday | January 2, 2004
Tym Glaser - SPORT SPOTLIGHT
CHRISTMAS MEALS consumed and New Year's hangovers (hopefully) gone, it is time for us all to look forward to sport year 2004.
The just concluded 365-day stanza saw the netball community come to the fore with a successful staging of the Netball World Championships at the new National Indoor Sports Centre (NISC) at Independence Park.
This year, the island's two other main team spectator and participant sports must come to the party and show the same type of optimism coupled with pragmatism of their netball sisters.
Firstly, newly-elected Jamaica Football Federation president Crenston Boxhill and his crew have to negotiate Jamaica's national team through tricky World Cup qualifying waters against most probably Haiti in the first round in February before the first group stage later in the year.
The Under-23 squad will also be in action in Mexico early next month, trying to emerge from a tough CONCACAF bracket and make the Olympic Games for the first time.
However, Boxhill should be measured more by local achievements than international results in his first year of incumbency. The local infrastructure needs to be revamped and greater transparency needs to be exhibited by the JFF; two of the platforms Boxhill rode upon.
His 54-49 victory over former president Captain Horace Burrell at the elections in November suggests he does not have an iron grip over the federation and that the honeymoon period may be alarmingly brief unless he can start pushing his agenda with clear-cut plans within the first half of the year.
With a greater time-frame but larger problem is the bid committee which is trying to procure 2007 World Cup cricket matches for Jamaica.
Basically, there are two trains of thought:
1) Upgrade Sabina Park
2) Build a new facility
Plan one is backed by traditionalists who claim Sabina Park is the home of cricket in Jamaica particularly the Kingston Cricket Club (KCC) which runs things there.
However, for Sabina to even be in the hunt, serious renovations need to be made to the ground; also the surrounding areas to cater for those changes plus increased parking room; and then the need for greater hotel room space for visitors in the Kingston area.
The KCC would need major government help to implement those changes and in exchange would probably have to forfeit some of its rights as a members club - a move it would be reluctant to accept.
Plan two calls for an all-sport facility to be built between the tourist havens of Ocho Rios and Montego Bay - most likely in Trelawny.
If the Highway 2000 project is up and rolling by 2007, it makes good sense. Not a long drive from Kingston; plenty of hotel accommodation available and no radical changing of a set infrastructure to cater for expansion and parking.
However, the promotion and building of any new stadium must be weighed against what has happened with the NISC.
It is a White Elephant which has not been used by any sporting body since July's netball championships. It is simply too expensive for the island's indoor sport associations to use.
Let's just hope the powers that be in sport made pragmatic resolutions as the curtain came down on 2003 and we won't be left with more coal and White Elephants in our Christmas stockings in the coming years. |
|
|
