Veteran sports administrator Anthony Davis says he “will bring something new to the table” if he is successful in his bid to be elected general secretary of the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) at the annual general meeting set for next month.

Davis, who recently retired as the sports director at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) and was the competitions director and meeting manager for the World Junior Championships held in Kingston in 2002 and has served the sport in various capacities for over 40 years, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday he was offering himself for the position “as an independent”.

With the current general secretary, Garth Gayle, contesting for the position of president of the JAAA, Davis is the first person to step up to fill the vacancy and told the Observer, “the position calls for someone who has time and I have all the time on my hands to dedicate to the job”.

Davis joins Olympic champion Donald Quarrie and result systems operator Wayne Long who have so far indicated their willingness to serve on the new executive.

Quarrie, a former first vice-president, will vie for the post of president, and Long for director of records.

In seeking to explain his use of the term ‘independent candidate’, Davis said, “traditionally candidates for the post of president of sporting bodies often times put together a slate of candidates and if they are successful, they will most times ask for their slates to be elected as well”.

Davis, however, does not agree with the method of electing persons for posts as he says “the sport sometimes ends up losing well-qualified persons who might not have been on the slate and gets left out in the process when voters make their selections out of loyalty to the president”.

If he is elected as the general secretary, however, Davis said his responsibility is to “work with the philosophy of the president and the executive. Our job is to support the president.”

Davis also called for more transparency in the operation of national sporting bodies which he agrees could lead to the perception of ‘old boys clubs’. “There has to be openness, we are people who are managing the affairs of the federation on behalf of the people and electing slates tends to perpetuate that kind of thinking.”

Asked why he decided to offer himself now, the former JAAA athletes representative in the 1970s, said. “I have never left the sport,” as he spoke of his service to the inter-collegiate body, serving in several capacities including competition secretary, general secretary and president, describing himself as “an operational type of person”.

He says he supports the call for a revamping of the operations methods of the JAAA where most of the work were being done by volunteers on a part time basis.

“There is just too much work to be done if the federation is to move forward. What we have now is people coming in after their full-time jobs and on weekends. We are long past that, that type of thing retards growth. It is time for us to adopt a business model.”

Davis says he hopes he will be able to engage the delegates and will be contesting the election on his “experience and ability and I will be banking on 45 years of service to the sport during which time I would have been seen by a wide cross section of those involved in the ssport”.

He says he had been promised the final list of voters by today and said he has been calling for the JAAA’s constitution to be put on the website where it can be accessed by anyone who is interested in reading it.