ORANJESTAD, Aruba - American Airlines flight 1318 from Miami made a smooth landing here on Friday night, but it has been a bumpy ride for Jamaica's Under-23 Olympic football team since touch down.

Nothing has gone in favour of the junior Reggae Boyz so far who are here for their CFU Olympic Games first round qualifying tournament against hosts Aruba, Antigua and Barbuda and Barbados. The Under-23s, who kick start their campaign against Antigua at the Complehjo Deportivo today at 5:00 pm (Jamaica time), have been put through one agonising experience after another.

Jamaica's head of delegation Carlton Dennis (right), physical trainer Sean Samuels (left) and coach Wendell Downswell find something to smile about at breakfast at the Coconut Inn in Aruba yesterday. (Photo: Sean Williams)

Firstly and most striking is the food. It sucks. On arrival at the Coconut Inn located on the north west side of the tiny southern Caribbean island, the hungry and weary Boyz were served an atrocious chicken stew of potatoes with a lame attempt at fried.

Bought from a shabby establishment about 50 metres from the hotel and served in foam boxes, most of, in not all, of the disgusting food ended up where it duly belonged - in garbage containers. So the players went to bed hungry.

The next morning breakfast, which was served at 8:30 by the hotel (motel), was a combination of scrambled eggs, bacon, sliced ham and bread. That the players forced down with watered down orange as they sought to ease their ravenous appetites.

Lunch, bought on the streets and brought to the team base at 2:00 pm, was a repeat of the previous night's dinner - a tasteless mix of fish and chicken with noodles and white rice. The players picked around the food and murmered before much of it ended the same place as dinner.

The dinner on Friday night and lunch yesterday were served with an extremely sweet orange flavoured drink. There was no water. The players had not had a sip of the precious fluid since arriving until late yesterday evening when members of the delegation obtained some at a nearby superette.

The Sunday Observer was told that the Arubanese Voetbal Bond (AVB) was responsible, not only for food preparation, but also to provide water for the visiting teams. The problem was they did not know this.
A meeting of the AVB, the CFU Match Commissary, Victor Daniels, and head of the Jamaican delegation Carlton 'Spanner' Dennis and team manager Howard 'Juicy' Bell, to resolve the pressing matters, revealed that the host was out of their league in organising a tournament of this nature.

"These people (Aruba football officials) didn't know that they were to provide us with water... we have now advised that we will need at least three cases of water per day, although we know we should get more," Dennis said.

Up to press time, no water had arrived for the players.
On the issue of food, the JFF team made a strong case on behalf of the group and warned Aruban football officials that if the problem was not fixed, their players' performance could be severely affected.

"We had a meeting with the Aruba football people and the (match) commissary and we complained about the food and we are hoping that it will get better as time goes on," Dennis noted.

A restaurant named Jamaica ME Crazy, which provides many Jamaican delights, was located and Dennis has told the hosts that that's where he would like the team to get its meals.

"There is a Jamaican restaurant here and we have told the organisers that we would like to get our food from there and they promised that they would call and let us know.

Failure to do that, we will let them know that we'll have a problem playing because if they players are not comfortable, they will not be able to perform," he said.
And while the hotel is numerous notches below what could be considered acceptable, at least there is 35-channel cable service, small refrigerator, air coniditioning and stove in each room.
"Where we are is not the best of hotels, but we will stay here... we just need to get the food right," Dennis argued.

Adrian Croes, who is the assistant treasurer, has been assigned to the Jamaican team, but at the time of writing he had not yet shown up.
"We have no liaison officer and we have nothing at all in place. We are here and the guys are trying their best to keep their heads up. It has been very difficult," Dennis said.

The team was instead met on arrival at the airport by the match commissary Daniels. But the signs were early that the Jamaicans were in for a unpleasant one-week stay here as the bus that transported them on their 20-minute ride from the airport had no windows, large holes in the roof and was a total green wreck.

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