I was watching the sports news on television about two weeks ago when Montego Bay United won the Premier League competition, and, of course, right in the middle of the celebratory event, and rightly so, was the ever-present Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) President Captain Horace Burrell.

After the sports news, I turned off the television and sat quietly and reflected on the state of Jamaica’s football under the leadership of Captain Burrell for the past 20 years — except for four years when Creston Boxhill was in charge. Two weeks later, I am still trying to quantify what Captain Burrell has really contributed to the growth of the sport in Jamaica. Yes, I know we made it to the World Cup finals in 1998. But what else? Since then we have struggled in each World Cup campaign just to get out of our zone.

For me, one of the biggest drawbacks, which should have been given priority years ago, has been the football fields that our local players have to play on. Almost every time I watch a local football match I cringe at the state of the fields on which our players are expected to produce top-class performances. They have little or no grass and the surfaces are uneven, and so, obviously, is the bounce of the ball. How do the players trap, pass or move to the ball with any degree of confidence? To my mind they are always going to have in the back of their minds the thought that the ball is going to be diverted by a clump of grass, a stone, or an indentation.

So I pose the question: How come after all these years, with the Captain firmly in control, the JFF has not been able to lobby and secure funds to assist the local top-flight clubs (at least) to improve the quality of their playing surfaces or, for that matter, develop even a dozen first-class fields across the island?

I got the impression that Captain Burrell and former FIFA President Sepp Blatter were close, and one would have hoped that Blatter could have been persuaded to make a special push to get funds to assist Jamaica to establish first-rate playing surfaces or to improve existing ones. I think Blatter, if he were so minded, could have made the argument to his other FIFA cohorts that the region’s football needs Jamaica to be competitive, and FIFA should have an interest in seeing the standard of football in Jamaica improve — starting with better playing surfaces.

I would have thought that after all these years the Captain would have been able to boast that, under his watch, at least a dozen top-class football fields with flat, even surfaces on which the ball rolls true had been added. That would also give the surface at the National Stadium a chance to be made into a truly world-class field.

My personal view is that Captain Burrell now believes, and has convinced many, that he is the only person who can run the JFF and there’s no point in challenging him. And he has probably made certain that he will stay at the helm for as long as he wishes since his company sponsors so many of the parish competitions. Let’s be honest, who else are the parish associations going to vote for when it’s election time?

But has he achieved all he is going to?

Stephen Harrison resides in St Mary, Jamaica. Send comments to the Observer orstepharrison28@gmail.com.