CHAIRMAN of the Technical Committee of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), Howard McIntosh, says the long-awaited technical centre will be constructed in two major planks which incorporate three proposed phases to be financed by FIFA Goal Bureau grants.

With funds from three Goal Projects totalling US$1.2 million, plus help from the government of Jamaica through the state-run Sports Development Foundation (SDF), the JFF Technical Centre will be sited on lands donated by the University of the West Indies (UWI).

Ground for the first phase was broken on Monday at the UWI location, enabled by Goal Project One with a grant of US$400,000 which has already been paid over to contractors, Tank-Weld Limited.

That phase — with work set to start Monday and to be completed by June this year — will include the construction of a full-size training field, changing rooms and perimeter fencing. When completed, president of the JFF Captain Horace Burrell said, applications will be made for Goal Projects Two and Three forthwith.

But phase one of the broader JFF outline, according to McIntosh, aims to integrate the first FIFA facet, plus more.

“There are three phases for FIFA… but for us (JFF) we are looking at it (the overall project) as two phases — the first is the development of two training fields, the technical secretariat, that’s the place where the coaches will have offices, dressing rooms, equipment storage and one observation tower,” explained McIntosh, who has long courted the idea of fashioning a technical facility much like the ones he has seen in Brazil.

He said phase two of the broad-based development will embody dormitories, conference facilities “and an area that will be a bigger building and that will allow us to have a proper technical home for football”.

Both of these phases, McIntosh says, are expected to be completed in two years.

“All this will happen through the partnership with the JFF, UWI, FIFA and the government through the SDF,” he said on Monday as he witnessed the inauguration of the construction with a ground-breaking ceremony at Mona.

McIntosh, a long-time ally of Burrell, said as chairman of the Technical Committee, his focus is on the long-term growth of football in Jamaica.

“My focus is on the long-term development of the game, and that means to put in the basic infrastructure that will ensure that the game will develop the way it should,” he said.

Professor Gordon Shirley, principal of the UWI and the man who spearheaded the campus’ facilitation of the project, said a technical centre for football is in keeping with the institution’s overall goal for sports.

“The university is of the view that, like music, sport is an industry for which Jamaica is very well-positioned. I think our problem has been that our athletes have not always had the best training facilities on par with those with whom they have to compete, nor do they have the necessary support system that goes along with it,” he said.

Lying adjacent to the six-and-a-half acres of UWI property on which the JFF Technical Centre will be built, construction work on the Usain Bolt Stadium is in full swing.

Back in 2003, ground was first broken for a Football Academy in Portmore, St Catherine, but the location was deemed not conducive to football by the new JFF administration led by Crenston Boxhill.

The site was moved to the remote and hilly St Elizabeth community of Malvern, and ground was again broken for a FIFA Goal Project with the usual US$400,000 grant.

That project was not completed and the current JFF administration is finding it difficult to sell the property at the asking price of $45 million.