ON Tuesday, September 22, the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) and the Premier League of Jamaica Interim Committee (PLJIC) held a press conference to announce the return of football to the island.

On that day it was stated that the Jamaican Premier League would return on November 14, with the potential of a December 6 start should things be delayed.

Curiously, this announcement was made without clearance from the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) and since then, the Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton has declared that football will not return before 2021.

Harbour View FC Chairman Carvel Stewart is still up in arms that the premier league season for 2019-2020 had been cancelled in May, and thinks that decision is contributing significantly to the reasons why football has not yet returned to Jamaica.

“If you look at Europe and elsewhere, even Costa Rica, they were able to complete the last season and then, on the basis of that, they are now playing relatively openly. They are no longer in bubbles, they go home at the end of matches and they return, and they do the necessary testing and from time to time. You hear people are infected and so on, but then they return to the game.

“Had we been able to set that example we might have been in that kind of environment and scenario now, but we are not and we don’t know what the issues are,” Stewart reasoned.

Stewart was the vice-chairman of the now-defunct Premier League Clubs Association (PLCA) when the decision was made to cancel the season earlier this year, a move he was against at the time.

“If you recall…my approach and attitude was that we should start and engage in a testing protocol; and we had communications with the stadium, we had communication with the two ministries as to how we would complete the season inside the stadium — no spectators like everybody else – and then proceed forward,” he said.

“In particular, the then chairman and I were working assiduously with [the] authorities to come up with a programme to complete in the month of July, and this was all denied to us.”

Stewart made some revelations, among them the suggestion that select premier league clubs have put their own self-interests ahead the football needs of the country.

“The JFF went into some secret arrangements long before they spoke to anybody externally. And there are letters that have been made available to others that said you must keep this confidential but you must vote by tomorrow as to whether or not to stop the league.

“They voted on the 8th of May to cancel football in Jamaica and then took a week later to announce it. They gave themselves time in order to come out and say they had consultations. I can tell you from the information that I have, there were no consultations. They had heated exchanges among themselves to cancel the football, and I know that a number of the premier league clubs literally conspired with them [JFF] because they came out to say the majority of the premier league clubs.

“There were individual reasons among the parties as to what their objectives were. Some had to do with retaining qualification at Concacaf level, some had to do with avoiding relegation, and simple matters like that – and those drove them to those conclusions. So, what they did, they killed the game at that point in time and now they don’t know how to restart it because they have not engaged the people properly,” Stewart lashed out.

The lifelong football man is asking for the discussions around football to be extended beyond the premier league as well.

“We need to speak more broadly about football, because football is about all the clubs in Jamaica. We are now speaking narrowly, about the premier league, but there are hundreds of clubs who have also been prevented from playing football.

“My own view, and I expressed it, the people who have clubs are the investors in the football – they finance the football, they enable the football to play. They participate in the development of the players and then they bring them forward into adult and senior players [of] football throughout the whole island of Jamaica, not just the premier league. Those are the people who know what is involved in running the football,” Stewart noted.

The civil engineer by trade believes that a lack of vested interest by those who govern the sport at the moment has led to decisions that are having a crippling effect on football in Jamaica.

“The majority of them [JFF functionaries] have never invested in football. They are not invested in football, therefore, they can come and make decisions that will eventually destroy football. Football, as we are now at this point in time in Jamaica, has been dealt almost a mortal blow by the kind of decision-making that was made then and continues to be made now. To me, it means nothing to them whether the game is played or not,” Stewart concluded.