St Elizabeth FA boss pleads for corporate support
LUANA, St Elizabeth — Frustrated by the parish’s long absence from the top flight, the football leadership in St Elizabeth is calling on elected politicians and the business community for greater support in developing the game.
“We hope and pray that our cries will not fall among thorns,” declared the St Elizabeth Football Association president, Patrick Malcolm, on Thursday night as he appealed for a major effort to improve playing surfaces and build the culture of football in the parish.
He was addressing the 46th annual presentation of awards ceremony and dinner at the Luana Sports Club, Luana, western St Elizabeth.
Malcolm suggested that the “deplorable” quality of football fields could be one reason no St Elizabeth club has participated in Jamaica’s top league since the 1970s when Tafari Lions and the now defunct Santa United did so.
Currently, he said, only the fields at the St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) in Santa Cruz at the centre of the parish and at the Appleton Sugar Estate in the north were suitable for high level football.
Elaborating further in a post-speech interview with Sporting World, Malcolm said that on all other fields there could be little or no surefootedness for the players because of hard, uneven surfaces that were often littered with stones and which quickly became muddy mires during rain, since there was no drainage.
“How as a nation with the sort of facilities we are still able to produce some footballers who can hold their own at the international level is something of a miracle,” Malcolm said.
He called no names, but told his audience that the four elected parliamentarians from the parish could help by seeking to develop a first-class football and sporting facility in each of their constituencies.
“If each politician were to develop a field then we would have six in a hurry (including) STETHS and Appleton,” he said. St Elizabeth MPs are Dr Christopher Tufton (JLP, SW St Elizabeth) who is Minister of Agriculture and Lands; Frank Witter (JLP, SE St Elizabeth), JC Hutchinson ( JLP, NW St Elizabeth) and Kern Spencer (PNP, NE St Elizabeth).
The quality of football surfaces apart, Malcolm emphasised the need for more corporate sponsorship. In the recently completed football season, the Major League sponsored by the rum company, Wray and Nephew; the Division One sponsored by the St Elizabeth Co-op Credit Union and the junior age-group programmes supported by the building society, VMBS were the only ones to receive corporate aid.
The knock-out competition, the Under-21 League and the Division Two were all played without sponsorship, while the Women’s league never took place because there was no money.
In urging the business sector to show greater interest in supporting football, Malcolm argued that the relatively low crime rate in St Elizabeth would have been much worse “were it not for football”.