I am sure Uncle Tim and Shell-done saying, "Phew, thought they would want to overthrow us with these results by our flagship U20 team but is like dey go have civil war among themselves blaming the coach, keeper, Flex, Tallman, Gally, Bertille, socawarriors website for this loss. We get orf scotch free. Horner wha yuh drinking, ..... 2 more gin and coconut water fuh de road. Leh we lash a nex' rongs before de madam call we nah. As long as we eh have to give a single press conference about this we good laughing all the way to de bank. Hee hee".
Most of the problems are off the field that will always result in on the field problems. Jess basic examples:
1. "Dah goalkeeper is de worst. How King cyah see that". Need international pre-tournament games to compare keepers under pressure to see who really is the least liability.
2. "The players eh ready". True they are not fully ready. Insufficient preparation. For all sports, you get out what you put in.
3. Jamaica scored on us in the last minute, damn!! Concentration, especially in the 89th minute, depends on match fitness which depends on pre-tournament scheduling of matches.
4. Coach is de worse. Might be. Maybe not. One way we would know for sure about the coach is when he is seen playing in international games with Central American pedigree.
5. Discipline and team shape depends a lot on match fitness too.
Maybe we have to put pressure on the TTFA to:
1. Establish, articulate (and circulate) the goal for the different squads. What have they got to lose by doing so?
2. Along with the coaches, identify the timetables of preparation and the minimum starting dates for preparation and number of practice games for each tournament.
3. Do the math and see how much money that will cost. Release the data to the newspapers so we can share the burden and let the sports ministers respond long in advance.
4. Do the math and see how much money has to be raised by all means possible, even if it means to ask funds-hustlers like FS.
5. Have your plan, goals and "grand-strategy powerpoint show" ready for marketing, branding and for stakeholders in private sector, sports ministry to buy into. Show them (in case they don't know) what's in it for them.
6. Get those necessary games for team preparation. That is the constant that is always lacking in our tournament disappointments.
All the stakeholders must share in the pressure to get the team exposed to enough games that will weed out our mistakes or weed out the players that reveal that they are prone to catastrophic errors.
We must lobby harder. Pressure does sometimes buss pipe. The most "impossible" task to remove Jackula was achieved, so this task of forcing administrative goal setting cyah be seen as impossible too.. There must be yardsticks by which we judge sports administrators who have responsibility. One way is to see how much they have addressed the agreed-upon objectives. This always seems lacking. They are hoping that we don't know how to make them accountable.
