hugh hen­der­son

I am not a bet­ting man but am will­ing to wa­ger $5 that (a) Christ­mas will fall on De­cem­ber 25 this year and (b) it will rain dur­ing the rainy sea­son.There­fore to be told that the new track at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um could not be com­plet­ed by the June 16 dead­line be­cause of rain -thus caus­ing the can­cel­la­tion of NAAA meet on June 25 and 26-is stretch­ing ex­cus­es a bit, to say noth­ing of the acute em­bar­rass­ment and in­con­ve­nience it has caused to ath­letes and re­gion­al ath­let­ic bod­ies. Prob­a­bly, no heads will roll this be­ing sweet T&T where no-one is ever held ac­count­able for non-per­for­mance.As a young­ster it was drilled in­to my head count­less times that "if some­thing is worth do­ing it is worth do­ing prop­er­ly."

The prob­lem is that Tri­nis in gen­er­al ac­cept things be­ing done any way but prop­er­ly. For ex­am­ple-fix­ing pot­holes; paving roads; clear­ing drains; polic­ing high­ways; dri­ving heavy ve­hi­cles in fast lanes; com­ing late for work; de­bat­ing non­sense in Par­lia­ment; curs­ing in pub­lic and on and on. No-one seems to care and stan­dards con­tin­ue to spi­ral down­ward. Back to the sta­di­um track, we can't even plan prop­er­ly even though we are giv­en rel­e­vant dates and dead­lines and should have mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems in place.To add to the fi­as­co, we kept ad­ver­tis­ing the meet on TV long af­ter the event had been of­fi­cial­ly can­celled. Who pays for and who ben­e­fits from such wast­ed ad­ver­tis­ing time? You see why it is so dif­fi­cult not to be cyn­i­cal about our dai­ly life?

Jack's cred­i­bil­i­ty

I keep be­ing asked my views on the Jack Warn­er saga and re­gard­less of the facts, two con­clu­sions ap­pear ob­vi­ous-T&T will be in the neg­a­tive in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines for some time be­cause of FI­FA, and un­for­tu­nate­ly Jack Warn­er will be a huge­ly con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure for the rest of his life. His cred­i­bil­i­ty will be at stake no mat­ter how much good he does or at­tempts to do. What­ev­er his faults, I feel sor­ry for Jack be­cause he has worked very hard for all his caus­es and made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence to many coun­tries and peo­ple. Af­ter near­ly 30 years in FI­FA he can safe­ly say "I have been there and done that" so should not re­gret miss­ing any up­com­ing im­por­tant foot­ball event, but be­ing hu­man will miss the sta­tus, pow­er, high pro­file and world wide recog­ni­tion he pre­vi­ous­ly en­joyed.

My fi­nal thought is that Jack will have to live with his own con­science and at the end of the day there is a God who will judge him and all the rest of us who have cho­sen to be judge and ju­ry with­out know­ing all the facts.What­ev­er Jack may have done wrong, I am will­ing to for­give based on "let him who is with­out sin, throw the first stone," "for­give oth­ers as I have for­giv­en you" and "love your neigh­bour as your­self." If Mr Warn­er has to re­sign as a Min­is­ter it would be a tragedy for the pop­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, there is a vi­cious an­i­mal at large known as "po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy" and forced res­ig­na­tion may well be the end re­sult. Please let "love" and "for­give­ness" be our watch­words for the sake of the na­tion as we have much big­ger mat­ters to deal with than the shenani­gans of FI­FA.

Gayle's is­sue

As for the Chris Gayle mat­ter I sug­gest we let it die a nat­ur­al death. We will live with or with­out Chris Gayle.I am not a fly sit­ting on Gayle's shoul­der to know all the facts, but it seems dif­fi­cult for Gayle to de­ny what he said about the Board and team man­age­ment and even if such were his in­ner­most feel­ings, you do not win friends and in­flu­ence peo­ple by go­ing pub­lic with such strong words against the hand that has fed you. For once I agree with WICB-if Gayle choos­es not to apol­o­gise, then so be it-that is his pre­rog­a­tive and he will stand or fall by his de­ci­sion. The tail can­not be al­lowed to wag the dog with­out a break­down in au­thor­i­ty.

Rowe's apol­o­gy

Should the Ja­maica Crick­et Board have named part of Sabi­na Park af­ter Lawrence Rowe when there are many oth­ers, like Jef­frey Du­jon, who have bet­ter served West In­dies and Ja­maica in the best crick­et and in­ter­na­tion­al tra­di­tions? I am all for for­give­ness es­pe­cial­ly af­ter 28 years, but has Rowe "ex­changed" an apol­o­gy for pub­lic recog­ni­tion or is his apol­o­gy gen­uine?

My feel­ing is that an apol­o­gy should be as im­me­di­ate as is prac­ti­cal and 28 years to say sor­ry does not win my vote even though bet­ter late than nev­er. I was per­son­al­ly in­volved with the South African af­fair through Lar­ry Gomes and our meet­ing with Dr Ali Bach­er in New York.Know­ing what Lar­ry was of­fered and what he turned down de­spite the enor­mous temp­ta­tion to get rich, sug­gests to me that Rowe could have fol­lowed the same road to up­hold prin­ci­ple and be­come a na­tion­al hero. He and oth­ers chose not to and paid the price.

Top in mud

The First Test be­tween WI and In­dia is now his­to­ry and since I con­sid­er my­self to be re­sult ori­ent­ed, I keep ques­tion­ing the roles/suc­cess (or lack of) of Messrs Richard­son, Gib­son and Haynes and I re­al­ly do not care about their records as Test crick­eters or any­thing else.A good bats­man does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make a good cap­tain or coach or man­ag­er. In all oth­er coun­tries, "big names" get fired at the drop of a hat if they can­not bring suc­cess to a fran­chise or na­tion­al squad and un­til we have a man­age­ment team which pro­duces pos­i­tive re­sults, we will keep spin­ning top in mud.Since Desmond Haynes took over as bat­ting con­sul­tant/coach, have we ever bat­ted worse? Just ask­ing! All the ex­perts claim that the play­ers' "at­ti­tude" is the prob­lem. If it is, then who is sup­posed to im­prove at­ti­tude - the tea la­dy or the man­age­ment team?

Life and death

With Wim­ble­don now in full flow, here is an in­ter­est­ing bit of ten­nis triv­ia told by com­men­ta­tor Dick En­berg. The first "Break­fast from Wim­ble­don" TV pro­gramme was tele­vised in 1979. At the time, British play­er Eliz­a­beth Ryan held the record for most Women's ten­nis ti­tles-19-but was then 87 years old. I

n 1979, Bil­lie Jean King, who al­so won 19 ti­tles was to play a fi­nal which would have giv­en her the new record of 20 ti­tles, which in fact she achieved. The ex­tra­or­di­nary thing was that about an hour be­fore Bil­lie Jean walked on­to Cen­tre Court, news came through that Eliz­a­beth Ryan had died, so she passed away hap­py, know­ing that her long stand­ing record was equaled but still not bro­ken! Isn't life (and death!) fas­ci­nat­ing?

Have a great week.