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ISSA's wonderful work and the need for improved playing surfaces
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The annual schoolboy football season is well underway and once again we feel compelled to register this newspaper's appreciation of the tremendous work being done by the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) - that body directed by principals which has run high school sports since 1910.
As we have repeatedly said in this space, the nation owes a great debt to ISSA for its consistent work down the years in nurturing and polishing young talent in the school system. It seems reasonable to suggest that without ISSA, the talent of many of our greatest sports stars across a range of disciplines - perhaps even including the peerless Mr Usain Bolt - would have remained undetected.
In football, ISSA's daCosta Cup and Manning Cup competitions, et al have sought to fill the vacuum that in more developed countries would have been occupied by the academy programmes and age-group competitions of the professional football clubs. ISSA has managed to do so with very limited resources and staff.
This season, close to 80 schools are competing in the daCosta Cup for rural high schools and close to 40 in the Corporate Area-based Manning Cup.
Thankfully, corporate sponsors, without whom organised competitive sport would be well nigh impossible, have again come forward. As we understand it, the title sponsors Pepsi and Digicel are this season spending in excess of $11 million each, and associate sponsors KFC and ScotiaBank close to $4 million each in seeking to assure the success of the schoolboy season.
The onus will be on all concerned, especially the individual schools, to make sure that indiscipline is kept to a minimum. Nothing so turns off sponsors and all well-thinking people as the kind of mindless indiscipline/hooliganism which all too often rears its head in football.
Quality must also be a consideration. We note an ongoing effort by the football authorities to improve coaching and indeed down the years it has been reflected, we think, in the tactical approach to the game across the spectrum.
But with the best will in the world, quality, technical football will not be achieved on the surfaces that most of our young footballers are being asked to parade their skills.
It is shameful that 11 years after Jamaica gloriously exited its first World Cup Finals with victory over Japan in France, the foundation that will make the future of Jamaica's football secure is yet to be built.
The National Stadium remains the only football venue of international standard, the academy to be provided through the FIFA Goal Project remains in limbo and most of our promising young footballers are honing their craft on surfaces that are no better than dust bowls and cow pastures.
We recognise that the inadequacy of money in government and the private sector - made worse by the current global economic recession - is a major hindrance in the development of sporting infrastructure. We expect that whenever the long-promised Sports Policy is finally unveiled, a comprehensive and practical plan aimed at improving the surfaces for not just our young footballers but for our sportsmen and women across the spectrum will be part and parcel.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The annual schoolboy football season is well underway and once again we feel compelled to register this newspaper's appreciation of the tremendous work being done by the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) - that body directed by principals which has run high school sports since 1910.
As we have repeatedly said in this space, the nation owes a great debt to ISSA for its consistent work down the years in nurturing and polishing young talent in the school system. It seems reasonable to suggest that without ISSA, the talent of many of our greatest sports stars across a range of disciplines - perhaps even including the peerless Mr Usain Bolt - would have remained undetected.
In football, ISSA's daCosta Cup and Manning Cup competitions, et al have sought to fill the vacuum that in more developed countries would have been occupied by the academy programmes and age-group competitions of the professional football clubs. ISSA has managed to do so with very limited resources and staff.
This season, close to 80 schools are competing in the daCosta Cup for rural high schools and close to 40 in the Corporate Area-based Manning Cup.
Thankfully, corporate sponsors, without whom organised competitive sport would be well nigh impossible, have again come forward. As we understand it, the title sponsors Pepsi and Digicel are this season spending in excess of $11 million each, and associate sponsors KFC and ScotiaBank close to $4 million each in seeking to assure the success of the schoolboy season.
The onus will be on all concerned, especially the individual schools, to make sure that indiscipline is kept to a minimum. Nothing so turns off sponsors and all well-thinking people as the kind of mindless indiscipline/hooliganism which all too often rears its head in football.
Quality must also be a consideration. We note an ongoing effort by the football authorities to improve coaching and indeed down the years it has been reflected, we think, in the tactical approach to the game across the spectrum.
But with the best will in the world, quality, technical football will not be achieved on the surfaces that most of our young footballers are being asked to parade their skills.
It is shameful that 11 years after Jamaica gloriously exited its first World Cup Finals with victory over Japan in France, the foundation that will make the future of Jamaica's football secure is yet to be built.
The National Stadium remains the only football venue of international standard, the academy to be provided through the FIFA Goal Project remains in limbo and most of our promising young footballers are honing their craft on surfaces that are no better than dust bowls and cow pastures.
We recognise that the inadequacy of money in government and the private sector - made worse by the current global economic recession - is a major hindrance in the development of sporting infrastructure. We expect that whenever the long-promised Sports Policy is finally unveiled, a comprehensive and practical plan aimed at improving the surfaces for not just our young footballers but for our sportsmen and women across the spectrum will be part and parcel.
Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
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