​“And now the end is near

So I face the fi­nal cur­tain

My friend, I’ll say it clear

I’ll state my case of which I’m cer­tain

​Re­grets, I’ve had a few

But then again, too few to men­tion

I did what I had to do

And saw it through with­out ex­cep­tion”

​The above words are from a pow­er­ful Frank Sina­tra song—My Way—that is wide­ly utilised on many oc­ca­sions. Re­cent­ly, it has be­come a fu­ner­al salute of sorts for per­sons whose lives sig­nalled a “My Way” ap­proach, which, de­pend­ing on which pew you sat in at the church or ser­vice, could be con­sid­ered good or bad.

​As it re­lates to the sport­ing re­al­i­ty that is Trinidad and To­ba­go, it ap­pears that the adop­tion of the “My Way” and “No Re­grets” men­tal­i­ties has both worked ad­verse­ly against T&T sport­ing fig­ures. Most of these ill-ad­vised de­ci­sions have come from per­sons off the field of play who end up hurt­ing those play­ing the sport. It ap­pears that those em­pow­ered with de­ci­sion-mak­ing are ig­no­rant of re­al­i­ty and lost in their own my­opic views and deca­dent thoughts.

​Let us sen­si­bly, with a clear mind and ob­jec­tive thought, ex­am­ine the de­ci­sion to first­ly raise a clue­less ques­tion such as the non-par­tic­i­pa­tion of To­ba­go Sec­ondary Schools in a T&T Sec­ondary Schools League Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion. Just the ac­tu­al time spent hav­ing this thought sug­gests a mind or minds full of idle range. Then, to com­pound this, the Sec­ondary Schools Coun­cil de­cid­ed to take a vote, mean­ing all mem­bers are cul­pa­ble of agree­ing on this lack-of-vi­sion ques­tion.

But it gets worse and nev­er gets bet­ter, as the ma­jor­i­ty of nine vot­ed in favour, the mi­nor­i­ty six against, and then the “Bru­tus cut,” ap­par­ent­ly from re­ports, saw six ab­stain. If this is true, then—like Jack Warn­er stat­ed on is­ports—those six per­sons let down a gen­er­a­tion of their an­ces­tors and could have caused ir­repara­ble dam­age to their lin­eage (that is, if they cared, of course).

​In the end, the up­roar from this de­ci­sion was too much as it grew on so­cial me­dia and ra­dio to a deaf­en­ing noise that led to the ap­par­ent in­ter­ven­tion of SporTT (Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T), or was it the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs? There ap­pears to be some con­fu­sion on this front, but at this mo­ment, no one who cares about our young­sters in foot­ball cares one io­ta. Al­though there ap­pears to be a school of thought that this was a mat­ter that should have been ad­ju­di­cat­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as the Sec­ondary Schools League re­ports di­rect­ly to it.

Then, on Sat­ur­day, this coun­try was told—as rain poured down in cer­tain ar­eas—that the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) gold medal-win­ning T&T net­ball team re­ceived some “aw­ful” treat­ment from their re­turn home to now.

​T&T’s pre­mier net­baller, Saman­tha Wal­lace-Joseph, re­vealed on is­ports that the team ar­rived home af­ter cap­tur­ing a gal­lant gold medal by de­feat­ing arch-ri­vals Ja­maica in the fi­nal to noth­ing and no one. Yes, no one; no­body was at Pi­ar­co Air­port to greet them. Yes, it was ear­ly in the morn­ing, but that should not be an ex­cuse for no me­dia, no SporTT per­son­nel, no Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs em­ploy­ees, and worst of all, no­body—no­body from the net­ball hi­er­ar­chy, from the net­ball fed­er­a­tion—to greet and con­grat­u­late them.

​Even if the hour was too ear­ly for some, I would like the net­ball body to ex­plain why, af­ter sev­en days back, there has been no func­tion and no greet­ing to cel­e­brate these young ladies (who in­ci­den­tal­ly re­ceive no stipends for train­ing or trav­el) who gave their all for the coun­try pure­ly based on love and are not high­light­ed more. It is not every day that T&T can de­feat Ja­maica in net­ball, so when it hap­pens, it must be wide­ly ac­claimed.

​These two in­stances, I know, may be in­signif­i­cant to most, but they sig­ni­fy the cur­rent malaise in many of our sports ad­min­is­tra­tions in this coun­try.

​The road ahead for T&T sports does not look rosy, will re­quire a lot of hard work, and giv­en how com­pet­i­tive many of our Caribbean neigh­bours have be­come, we are fac­ing tough times.

What is re­quired is a meet­ing of the minds of se­ri­ous-mind­ed, hon­est­ly car­ing cit­i­zens in­volved in sports, equipped with men­tal re­solve, back­ground, knowl­edge, and a will­ing­ness to lis­ten. I would sug­gest a group of no more than ten per­sons: five tem­pered-mind­ed in­di­vid­u­als with sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion back­grounds (coach­es, for­mer ath­letes, busi­ness-acu­men per­sons), three ath­letes, and two fi­nan­cial/le­gal per­sons (an ac­coun­tant and a lawyer).

​I can think of at least five to six re­spect­ed per­sons to fill these roles, but we need to act now and not wait, or the re­grets will not on­ly pile up, but be­come in­sur­mount­able.