What­ev­er the sport! Who­ev­er you speak to in sports! Wher­ev­er you are, in sports! There ap­pears to be one com­mon fac­tor—a dis­con­nect!

All of the above sug­gests the need for ur­gent change and in the ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es, it ap­pears that the sports­men and sports­women in this coun­try have found them­selves search­ing for an­swers, whether it is their re­spec­tive sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tions or the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), there is no as­sis­tance to be found.

Swim­ming, hock­ey, net­ball and box­ing are suf­fer­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly, while foot­ball and crick­et con­tin­ue to get most of the sup­port even if it is some­times de­layed or spo­radic.

SporTT has a lot to be held ac­count­able for, not least their con­stant atro­cious main­te­nance of many of the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties. Most re­cent­ly, we have the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty where our World Cup-bound hock­ey squad was sup­posed to train. When the hock­ey team asked for light­ing as eight bulbs were miss­ing, SporTT sent over fans and then lat­er in the week more bulbs blew and the team was train­ing in dark­ness.

The Hock­ey As­so­ci­a­tion or Fed­er­a­tion (the name makes no dif­fer­ence) ei­ther don’t care or are too busy pack­ing their bags for the Paris Olympics in their var­i­ous roles in in­ter­na­tion­al hock­ey. This is not the first time, that we have been told of this sort of cal­lous be­hav­iour by those who are sup­posed to ad­min­is­ter the sport in hock­ey and it will prob­a­bly not be the last.

Nev­er­the­less, SporTT as the or­gan­i­sa­tion in­vest­ed with the main­te­nance du­ties should be more proac­tive and not just ap­par­ent­ly sleep­ing on the job, there­by con­firm­ing to many that they are not equipped and skilled enough to per­form this func­tion.

For far too long, SporTT has strug­gled with fa­cil­i­ties be­cause its fo­cus has drift­ed to the much more palat­able for them, sub­ject of “fund­ing “and this rise in role has per­haps al­lowed one or two per­sons with­in the group to be­come swell head­ed and every­one is ful­ly aware of this. Sports and sports ad­min­is­tra­tion need men and women of ac­tion of re­solve and to un­der­stand where their skill set bet­ter serves.

It is not all bad at SporTT be­cause I tru­ly be­lieve that the chair­man Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho has his heart and soul in sports and cares but he can­not and should not have to do it all alone.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ja­son Williams is al­so a man with sport­ing pedi­gree, as too Ephraim Ser­rette and Justin Lat­apy George. But yet still the work­ings of SporTT and some of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing begs the ques­tion of whether knowl­edge and best in­ten­tions can work in an en­vi­ron­ment dom­i­nat­ed by fol­ly and mind­less de­ci­sion-mak­ing, backed up by lazy ac­tions.

It is per­plex­ing that the Sports Com­mis­sion has not been es­tab­lished as yet, fol­low­ing all of the best prac­tice phi­los­o­phy and plan­ning. Per­haps giv­en the cur­rent state of SporTT, this mat­ter needs to be placed on the front burn­er.

As we head to­wards the Paris Olympics, we as a coun­try should not be sur­prised by the pauci­ty of our ath­letes for this Olympics as many have lost in­ter­est be­cause of the frus­tra­tion and treat­ment in their sport.

It is there­fore time for ma­jor de­ci­sions to be made as “Enough is Enough” and we can no longer al­low our­selves to be dis­ad­van­taged in the sport­ing world by per­sons look­ing af­ter sports that ap­par­ent­ly are not in­ter­est­ed in the sport but rather more self-con­scious in their po­si­tions among the sport­ing elite. Many per­sons, I have found are far more in­ter­est­ed in at­tend­ing func­tions than at­tend­ing to their work.

And the great pity is that T&T have a lot of tal­ent and this has most prob­a­bly been lost be­cause of the lack of fo­cus of those in au­thor­i­ty. I can on­ly hope that there is a re­view both of ad­min­is­tra­tions in this coun­try as well as train­ing for sev­er­al of those that hold these po­si­tions.

When you lis­ten to facts, like swim­ming elec­tions are over­due, and yet still it ap­pears that SporTT is still fa­cil­i­tat­ing fund­ing to this or­gan­i­sa­tion, while oth­ers who ap­pear to be fol­low­ing the cor­rect pro­ce­dure have ob­sta­cles placed in front of them, it is easy to be­lieve that favouritism and bias still per­me­ate the cor­ri­dors of sports.

Who will be brave enough to make the nec­es­sary se­ri­ous ad­just­ments and to en­sure that de­ci­sive ac­tion is fol­lowed and we can have at least a prop­er rem­e­dy in sports? It is not too late, but we need per­sons to put up their hands and stop talk­ing and take ac­tion. There will be reper­cus­sions, but in the long run, once it is done fair­ly and with trans­paren­cy not many will ar­gue.

So, enough is enough!