Burrell underlines pledge to make JFF more professional

Audley Boyd, Assistant Editor - Sport

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad:

HAVING institutionalised training for match officials and other team players numbered among its major goals, the Captain Horace Burrell-led Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) executive will set off on an unchallenged path in its next term, which begins later this year.

The federation's board made a unanimous decision to return its executive en bloc late last week, for which Burrell, who is in Trinidad and Tobago to watch Jamaica play the home team in a friendly today, expressed gratitude.

"I want to express thanks to the football family for continuing to have confidence in my leadership and, by extension, for having elected the group en bloc," he said.

"This demonstrates strong confidence in the current executive, which has been in office for just under three years.

"The current mandate given is, however, for four years as, at the last congress, it was decided that commencement of the football leadership should coincide with the conclusion of the World Cup, so as to give the new executive the opportunity to work through a four-year cycle, thus preventing any change of leadership leading up to the World Cup qualifying period," he explained.

Coach switch

With the change of the Crenston Boxhill-led administration, there came a switch in the national team's head coach, with René Simoes replacing Bora Milutinovic.

Simoes, following a string of failures that eventually killed off Jamaica's World Cup qualifying chances, was later replaced by Theodore Whitmore, who is the team's current coach.

The latter has been part of the training seminars that have featured in the JFF's reorganisation.

"On taking office we imme-diately began to completely overhaul the JFF in the areas of administration, the training of administrators, referees and the establishment of a formal football training school at the University of Technology (UTech)," Burrell pointed out.

"We also established certain standards for coaching and made it mandatory for coaches to be qualified before taking up positions at the Manning and daCosta Cup levels, as also the Premier League level."

Improvement from training

Burrell said such training enhances the level of its officials.

"Without qualified and competent officials the development of the sport is bound to be retarded, and so we embarked on a series of training courses for referees' instructors and referees, with support from the Referees Assistance Programme, of which Jamaica's Peter Prendergast is a member."

He added: "In addition, several seminars/training courses have been held for parish presidents, general secretaries and other administrators occupying key positions. We also ran some other courses for club administrators and match commissaries.

"The importance of the many training courses held cannot be overemphasised as without effective and competent leadership at all levels in the sport, without those everything else would be doomed to failure," said Burrell.

Going forward, the JFF president said they will need to offset the problems faced previously, with increased funding.

"The major challenge that the administration faces is one faced by all sporting organisations but, unfortunately, it affects football even more because of having to look after all of nine national teams - both male and female," noted Burrell.

"In addition, all of these teams participate in international competitions outside of Jamaica, which further compounds the problem. Therefore, it is safe to say that the lack of funding for the many programmes is our greatest challenge."

He added: "As we move forward, it is our hope that we will be able to attract corporate sponsorship, as well as additional funding through the Sports Development Foundation."

The other members of his executive who will work alongside the board to fulfil their goals are Dale Spencer (first vice-president), Bruce Gaynor (second vice-president), Raymond Anderson (third vice-president), Garfield Sinclair (treasurer) and Lorraine Scringer (executive officer).