By Paul A. Reid, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU: CRENSTON BOXHILL, a JFF vice-president and president of the Clarendon Football Association (CFA), said that until the sport's governing body here institute a "meaningful national youth football programme" the quality of the local game will continue to slide.
Boxhill told the St James executive and players at a presentation ceremony that the lowering of the talent levels was not one that was unique to them but was a national concern.
The former national senior team manager said he recalled the days when western Jamaica was a constant supplier of talent to the national teams with players of the calibre of Hector Wright, Kenneth Gaynor and Milton Griffiths.
"Until we at the JFF put in a meaningful youth football programme we are going to see this trend continuing," he said.
Dale Spencer, president of the Manchester FA, also addressed the gathering and said the heights that football in the parish of St James had once reached must make the recent struggles hard to handle.
"The St James football fraternity has had a long and noble history in Jamaica's football and sometimes when you have achieved as much as St James, anything less than that may seem like failure," he said.
He further stated that: "Football, as is life, is filled with vicissitudes. There are times when you are on top and there are times when you will be in the background, but all of us in football have to draw on our strengths and know that together we can return St James not only to the heights that you once enjoyed but to higher heights as well."
