Seit yah Jangle! Schoolboy football and the bigger picture

[Karl]

Schoolboy football and the bigger picture
Saturday, September 11, 2010



One week into the new school year and the football fever is building.
Today is the start of Jamaica's schoolboy football competitions (Manning Cup and daCosta Cup) run by that most august of institutions, the 100-year-old Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA).


As we have found reason to say repeatedly in this space, Jamaicans owe much to ISSA for providing the nursery through its competitions for the nation's exceptional success in a range of sporting disciplines, including track and field, cricket, football and netball.


With very little help from government — which, to be fair, is never awash with cash — the ISSA, with a skeletal staff, has managed year after year to raise funds and provide some of the best organised sporting competitions on the Jamaican landscape.


We are told that for this year's ISSA/Pepsi/Digicel Schoolboy Football season 40 schools will contest the urban area Manning Cup, up from 31 last year, while 71 schools will vie for the rural area daCosta Cup, down from 80 last season.


For ISSA, the daCosta Cup and Manning Cup competitions are particularly important since football and track and field — through the annual Boys' and Girls' Athletic Championships — are the only disciplines with the potential to raise money through gate receipts. Indeed, as we understand it, such funds have been used by ISSA to subsidise other activities on its sporting calendar.


Organised sport as we know it would not exist without sponsorship and Jamaica's football is understandably grateful to Pepsi Cola Jamaica and telecommunications server Digicel for their support of the schoolboy competitions.


Jamaican sport remains mainly amateur. So most local football clubs, for example, lack the wherewithal to provide the sort of nurturing environment for very young players that is commonplace and taken for granted in the developed football world.


From a developmental point of view, therefore, the ISSA-run football competitions are priceless, contributing substantially to the growing export of players to professional clubs abroad — a business now worth millions of US dollars in fees and salaries.


Also, of course, a major beneficiary is the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), which has overarching responsibility for all of the nation's football and national teams.


More than most, the JFF has a vested interest in the success of the schoolboy football programmes. Hence recent praise for ISSA from the JFF president Captain Horace Burrell, regarding the gradual improvement in the level of coaches in schools.


A major difficulty for ISSA relates to the affordability of suitable venues and the quality of the surfaces. Good football becomes impossible on bad fields and unfortunately there are far too many of the latter.


It seems to us that it is full time for the JFF, ISSA and all other stakeholders, including sponsors and government — no matter how cash-strapped — to knock heads in trying to deal with this problem. The Government should start the ball a-rolling by finally bringing to the table that long-awaited sports policy.


http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...icture_7952396

[Karl]

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Sunday, December 27, 2009

Karl: Looking towards a return to the FIFA World Cup Finals



Every year since the exploits of 1994 through 1998 from all the stakeholders - administrators, technical directors and advisors, club organizations, players, the Jamaica people – there is renewed hope of ‘a rising in our football’. There is the expressed faith by most of our people that in all areas - and certainly in the quality of our players - talent abounds.

Yes, there are the pessimists and those who even after viewing the talent of Jamaicans expressed in various disciplines and in various parts of the world exhibit reluctance to embrace the undoubted talent that abounds. It appears that among some of those there is even fear of that talent being developed to full potential as it would expose their fear as unwarranted and not based on the reality of the potential they see.

But let us here accept the reality that talent abounds and that it abounds across the entire football spectrum.

In 1998 during a Captain Horace Burrell led administration there was the effort, the necessary mental fortitude and talented personnel assembled to get us to the FIFA World Cup Finals in France. Every four year cycle since, we have all looked towards a repeat visit to the FIFA World Cup Finals. We have never made it back.

It seems that we are stuck in 1998 vein. We have failed to take under consideration that the game has changed. The game of football has moved on towards players with greater technical skills, faster, stronger and more team orientated. We have not improved at a rate to keep up with those realities.

I am sorry to have to report that the administrators, including our Captain Horace Burrell and our General Secretary Horace Reid, our technical directors, including all our foreign and local coaches and thus our players have not yet grasped the importance of the changes to a faster game and the demands for increased team play. That lack of understanding reflects itself in results gained when we meet teams outside of our CONCACAF region and our record against the likes of Mexico and the USA since ’98.

Let us now recall the occasional win over Mexico and draws with the USA.

There are two sets of stateholders, each with different mind-set, the visionary and the blind. Our past results speak to, for the first set, the level of our talent and the possibilities if that talent was properly developed and utilized; and for the blind, it roots them to and in ignorance.

The former set often wonders why not progress and cries in agony for the other stakeholders to awaken to the realities of our position in CONCACAF and World Football and the need to fully utilize that with which we are blessed.

The second set ‘grasp for straws’. This latter set do not think on progress made in the top football nations and in some of the many countries, including some in CONCACAF, who are working sensibly and assiduously towards improving standards in all the various areas within their football. They do not think on the fact that talent abounds everywhere and that in countries with administrators who wish for their countries a climb upwards on the football totem pole, careful planning to effect same is a present continuous thing. These second set saw the results, of say, the last CONCACAF hexagon of our FIFA Qualifiers and cannot stir their minds from that past. They do not think on quality of play next time around being of a higher standard within the nations our Reggae Boyz met then. For them, all outside remains the same. For them, our Reggae Boyz need just some small increment of improvement. They are blind.

There is a reason why since 1998 when the world football market welcomed our Ricardo “Bibi” Gardner there has been no other Reggae Boyz who has attained his level of importance to a team in the EPL. In fact, if we call a spade a spade, our record signing since to the English League, Claude Davis has been a resounding failure. So far all our ‘exports’ since “Bibi” have not made the improvement in quality of play or impact within their team or the league that we would have liked.

The question is whose fault is it that they have not made the strides we wished of them?

The football stakeholders should have no choice but to think on and to believe that the fault lies with selves.

If JFF President, Captain Horace Burrell is our football’s Chief Executive Officer and General Secretary, Mr. Horace Reid our Chief Operations Officer, then driving the dialogue, leading the charge to perfect plans and driving action(s) to implement the plans must be ‘owned’ by them. The successes such as they are, and the failures such as they are, belong to them.

It must be that the stakeholders have not made it abundantly clear what they want of the leaders.

Whatever needs to be done to rapidly improve our football product, must be done. Our football leaders, CEO, Captain Horace Burrell and COO, Mr. Horace Reid must lead the charge.

The questions both gentlemen must exercise their minds on are many. So it is with all leaders, be it in business, politics or sports. These gentlemen are not being asked to do anything outside of the norm.

As far as the ordinary spectator and supporter of our national teams is concerned, it is – Improve results against other nations. Give us consistently, wins! Move us up the FIFA Rankings! Get us back to the FIFA World Cup Finals!

No excuses! Captain Burrell and Mr. Horace Reid owns this administrative period. It is theirs to win accolades or brickbats.

What then are the tasks to be accomplished?

Tasks:
1) Assembly national teams with adequate back room support and funding
a) Age-Groups U-15 through U19: Assembly Parish teams and the higher standard Confederation teams.
b) Olympic team: Identify and assembly national group (drawn from age-group teams, U-21 and other players U-23 years old in the REGGAE BOYZ squad).
c) U-21: Assembly national squad – Annual World tours? – 2 home matches, 8 away matches.
d) National Senior Team, The REGGAE BOYZ: Annual - 4 home matches, 6 away matches all against quality opposition.

2) Organize on national basis – Work with the Preparatory schools and Primary schools culminating in all-schools parish teams playing for an all-island trophy under the reigns of the national technical staff – 14 teams; 14 coaches.

3) Organize on national basis – Coaching that emphasizes TEAM play. Invite top clubs coaches to the island to share their knowledge with our locals and send our coaches to the top clubs to see top managers at work.

4) Open our Academy for business.

5) Put proper funding in place to support the entire JFF organization, its recurring expenses and its plans.

Our future attendance at FIFA World Cups, the performances of our national teams and our individual players depend on the President of the JFF, Captain Horace Burrell and his faithful lieutenant, Mr. Horace Reid for leadership with vision to imagine what can be and the strength to make that vision reality.

FORWARD!

Karl Wallace is the Business Development Manager of TSA Sports Agency Limited. He can be reached at karl.wallace@sportsagencyja.com


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Editor's Note: While these articles are filled with correspondent's insight and expertise, they are based on the author's point of view and may contain speculation as well as fact. The views expressed by the author are not necessarily the views of The Reggae Boyz Supporterz Club.

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