SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth – President of the St Elizabeth Football Association Patrick Malcolm is breathing easier after surviving a recent challenge from fellow educator Keith Wellington at the association’s voting congress.

However, he is under no illusions about the task ahead, especially given the shortage of money to fund football programmes in the parish.

He is hoping that initiatives to secure additional sponsorship will soon reap rewards.

“We have been speaking with corporate Jamaica and the hope is that we will land a ‘big fish’ soon. We really need it because there are five competitions which are not sponsored, and we haven’t added the new female competition yet,” Malcolm told the Jamaica Observer Central.

“The women’s competition started this year, in June, and we want to add that as a normal process, but it really needs sponsorship,” he said.

Malcolm said even those competitions that had previously attracted sponsorship were well short of adequate resources.

“We had a budget for the Major League competition of $2.9 million [but] we were one million short; we had a budget for Division One of $1.8 million. We [only] got $900,000, so we are short in all corners,” he added.

The drawbacks, notwithstanding, Malcolm was thankful that “we (the executive) have run all the competitions that we have had to run”.

He is hopeful that in his new term as president, the football fraternity will embrace structural changes being proposed by the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) in a bid to advance and ‘professionalise’ the game.

An important element of the forward push will be to improve the management of the clubs, Malcolm said. “The structure of the clubs has to be changed … We have to get proper management…,” he said.

But even when that is achieved, Malcolm says there is still the problem of too many clubs and football talent spread too thin. Many football leaders in St Elizabeth have long argued that fewer clubs would allow a higher standard of play and a greater chance for a representative from the parish to make it to the Premier league.

A St Elizabeth club last played top-flight football in 1976/77, when Santa United placed third and was named the most disciplined team in what was then the National League.

Malcolm says a greater pooling of talent could restore the parish to those glory days.

“With 30 clubs in the parish I don’t think we have the depth of footballers in 155,000 people to fill 30 clubs,” says Malcolm.

“What we are trying to do is to get the clubs to understand that you in your little corner won’t make it. We need to start going out getting the good players, getting a good management structure, putting them together as a unit, and make the thing work,” he added.

Malcolm, principal of Carisbrook Primary School, defeated Wellington, principal at St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) by 35 votes to 30 at the congress. He commented that the presidential challenge had helped to energise the football association.

“This is good for St Elizabeth football,” he said. “For about 10 or 12 years we didn’t have a challenge in the parish, and the fact that we had a challenge meant that people had to get out there and really do some work. For me, the work should have been done from inside over the last four years. Unfortunately, not many people seem to have seen it that way, and that is the issue with people …,” he said.

Others elected alongside Malcolm were Fitzroy Chedda, 1st vice-president; Richard Walters, 2nd vice president; Kwesi Falconer, 3rd vice president; Lennie Campbell, treasurer; Paul Vassell, general secretary; and Charmaine Ford, assistant general secretary.