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Karl
Senior Member
USA
914 Posts |
 Posted - Jan 29 2002 : 12:37:41 PM
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....incident.
Taken from Ranger's posting on the interactive website www.reggaeboyzsc.com
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From the mailbag this week Mr. Roger Moore wrote:
Dear Mr. Ranger,
although I always find your articles interesting reading, I must respond to your article regarding the unfortunate incident between Tivoli and Arnett at Harbour View recently.
You have raised some salient issues, however I don’t think you have addressed the real cause of this incident and put the blame firmly where it is deserved. This I will do by pasting a copy of a posting I made to one of the daily tabloid website. My article is self-explanatory.
January 17,2002
Football, The Economics of Football and Warring Tribes...
To completely understand what happened at Harbour View, we must first analyse and understand the administration of football in Jamaica and the economics of football in Jamaica.
The Jackie Bell KO competition is played under the auspices of the Kingston and St. Andrew Football Association (KSAFA) i.e. only teams in Kingston and St. Andrew can play in this competition (all parishes have their relevant KO competitions...the National KO is called the Federation Cup, sponsored by JNBS).
KSAFA is strapped for cash. With a budget of over six (6) million dollars to run its various competitions and without the funds due to the scaling down of the amount of sponsorship from Wray and Nephew, a game between Arnett Gardens (the best supported team in Jamaica) and arch rivals Tivoli Gardens, is a mega earner, that could easily collect two million dollars ($2m) at the gate (10,000 capacity @ Harbour View x $200).
If the game had been played at Up Park Camp there would have been no spectators...therefore no gate receipts.
WHAT HAPPENED AT HARBOUR VIEW WAS CAUSED BY SHEER GREED BY THE ADMINISTRATION OF KSAFA. IN ORDER TO BOOST THEIR COFFERS THEY ALLOWED A GAME THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN PLAYED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, WITH REGARDS TO THE CURRENT TENSIONS THAT EXIST IN JAMAICA TODAY, TO BE PLAYED IN AN ENVIRONMENT THAT ENABLED SUCH A DISPICABLE EVENT TO OCCUR.
This latest clash will further cause the rift between the two communities to widen, and believe me, ultimately cause an escalation of violence.
Football in Jamaica has been the salve that has healed our wounds caused by tribal and other violence. The statistics are there to show that when a WCQ was being played, crime in that time span was non-existent. Football has been used to control communities, keep down crime and empower youths. On the reverse, it has been used by politicians and gangsters to consolidate power and launder money. (The example cited by Mr. Moore has been edited for obvious reasons).
Football in Jamaica, and the administration thereof, must be held responsible to promote situations where incidences such as these do not occur and the governing body of football in Jamaica, the JFF, must immediately bring KSAFA to book and severely sanction them for holding the nation at ransom, through the promotion of this game under such conditions, just for the sake of a buck.
I must say Mr. Moore that there many people who share your view and I heard those sentiments being expressed at the venue after the incident. I must add that there are people on the ‘inside’ that share the same view. But we have in the past, seen where football officials have admitted to staging games at venues which put one team at a disadvantage in order to capitalize on gate receipts. So this is not new.
What I will say is this. Both KSAFA and the clubs are at fault. The head of both clubs agreed that the game be played outside of Up Park Camp. In that regard they deserve to be fined for agreeing and not being able to control their fans, which I don’t think that they can do anyway, but they agreed. But maybe in the interest of football and of both teams playing together, both parties gambled (albeit for different reasons), and lost.
So you are right, KSAFA does deserve some stick for their part in it. KSAFA has in its ranks people from the JFF match day planning committee who knew what would have to be in place for such a game to be played and minimise the security risk. I understand that these people did try to arrange ‘safer’ seating arrangements, but one legion of fans refused to comply. They should have refused to start the game until the fans complied. This was not done. Again, KSAFA deserves some stick for this.
I also wanted to give KSAFA some more stick for the security arrangements that were put in place for the game. This thing of having three to six police personnel on hand is a joke. But this was explained to me as being beyond their control as this is the number allowed by the security force to be at any single local game. I will comment on this on another occasion.
Karl
Edited by - Karl on Jan 29 2002 12:52:02 |
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