By Charmaine Austin, Staff Reporter THE CABLE & Wireless World Championship is only 44 days away, and instead of looking forward to the start with her usual optimism, Molly Rhone, the usually calm, unperturbed president of the Jamaica Netball Association, is a worried woman.
The Championship is scheduled to get under way on July 10 at the National Arena, and Rhone is concerned because, in her opinion, work at the Arena is not progressing quickly enough.
"I am concerned," said president Rhone yesterday, "and my concern is the speed of the job. It is not going fast enough. The new facility - the indoor court - is in a more ready state but I'm wondering if the Arena will be finished on time.
"I am not an engineer, but I've looked inside and it seems that the work is progressing very slowly," Rhone said.
The new indoor court is situated close to the Arena and will accommodate some of the netball games. It is almost completed but the Arena on casual observation seems deserted and devoid of any activity.
Yesterday it was in the same dirty, run-down state it was when the Sunshine Girls played world champions Australia in a practice series there in March and it is its present condition that is Rhone's main worry.
"Don't worry," said an official of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) the government agency that is handling all the contractual arrangements for the facility.
"Although it doesn't seem that way, work is actually being done on the Arena, and we will get the job done on time like we promised. We said June, and it will be done in June. We can't guarantee that it will be ready in the first week, but by the second week there will be signs that the place will be ready long before the Championship starts," said the UDC official yesterday.
The UDC pulled off a similar feat when they managed to get the National Stadium complex ready to stage the Coca Cola World Junior Championships last year and they have a reputation of getting the job done on time - right on time.
They repeated when they made the Stadium football field ready for Jamaica's friendly international against the United States in February, and they promise to do it again.
"We are presently painting the outside and doing additional electrical work. That is almost completed. The stands are already repaired, and the AC (air conditioning) is going in. We had some men doing some work on the roof last week. The change rooms will soon be worked on, so there's nothing to be worried about.
"It's a tall order just to paint the building, but we're going on just fine. Once we've set a time, we'll meet the deadline. This is nothing new to us," he said.
