Why do play­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors of sport­ing dis­ci­plines be­lieve that they are ex­empt from the same kind of scruti­ny and crit­i­cism from their sup­port­ers, fans, and the me­dia as crick­eters and foot­ballers ex­pe­ri­ence?

From the day you de­cide to be­come in­volved in sports as an ath­lete or ad­min­is­tra­tor, you are a pub­lic fig­ure.

Once you are fi­nanced by your fans and sup­port­ers, pri­vate and gov­ern­ment fund­ing you must give an ac­count for your per­for­mance, ac­tions, and be­hav­iour.

Why wouldn’t you want to an­swer for your non-per­for­mance at a lev­el that is ex­pect­ed or sat­is­fy­ing to your stake­hold­ers?

There are dif­fer­ences be­tween who is a fan and who is a sup­port­er, how­ev­er, they want the same re­sults be­cause the on­ly thing they are in­ter­est­ed in is re­sults and they know when to be sym­pa­thet­ic and are of­ten will­ing to show em­pa­thy. 

Ak­ilesh Rad­hakr­ish­nan, a foot­ball sup­port­er and blog­ger of pop­u­lar Eng­lish Pre­mier League club Chelsea wrote, “A sup­port­er is some­one who is com­plete­ly be­hind a team and wants them to win every game. A sup­port­er’s emo­tions hinge a lot on his team’s re­sult. A fan is mere­ly an ad­mir­er who en­joys watch­ing a team play with­out let­ting the re­sult af­fect him too much.” 

This takes me to an unedit­ed Face­book post by one of our na­tion­al net­ball play­ers dur­ing the Net­ball World Cup in which T&T’s Ca­lyp­so Girls record­ed its low­est po­si­tion ever. The team fin­ished the World Cup 12th out of 16 teams.

Af­ter two loss­es the play­er wrote, “Where was the lega­cy af­ter we won the World Cup back then [1979] where was the “WHAT NEXT?” A lot of you just talk­ing and talk­ing on­ly neg­a­tiv­i­ty about the team. Why isn’t there any­thing be­ing poured in­to the sport? We have a lot of play­ers that aren’t work­ing and still make sac­ri­fices to come to train­ing ses­sions not know­ing where mon­ey will come from to go back home much less for the next ses­sion. What about the play­ers that work at a pri­vate firm? that wouldn’t get the time off with pay?

“Why isn’t any­thing be­ing done to help them? And if you feel gov­ern­ment work­ers has it easy they don’t be­cause time off isn’t be­ing giv­en for train­ing ses­sions it is on­ly giv­en when you are to leave the coun­try for na­tion­al du­ties. So if morn­ing ses­sions are be­ing asked for you wouldn’t be able to get the time off. The least you could do is show sup­port but then again some of al­lyuh too de­ceit­ful, al­lyuh just love to bring peo­ple down so al­lyuh ain’t know about that word sup­port. Please let me know which oth­er sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go is top 12 ranked in the world.”

The ad­vent of so­cial me­dia has made ‘John Pub­lic’ a pub­lish­er with­out a li­cense which al­lows for mis­guid­ed state­ments with­out facts, and ac­cu­sa­tions be­cause one is an­gry. This is one of those sit­u­a­tions.

There are sev­er­al schools of thought about how a fan and sup­port­er is de­fined be­cause the facts are they are not the same.

For ex­am­ple, I feel the pas­sion in the play­er’s state­ment and she has a right to be as vo­cal as she wish­es but why at­tack fans and sup­port­ers who know that you can do bet­ter and ex­pect bet­ter?

Sports fans and sup­port­ers live in a re­al­i­ty they know which game or games their teams can po­ten­tial­ly win and lose. What sur­pris­es fans and sup­port­ers is the team per­for­mance and play­ers’ in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances.

Re­sults are what fans and sup­port­ers put for­ward dur­ing de­bates and en­hance their brag­ging rights. Say­ing that the team per­formed bad­ly, or the play­ers made too many er­rors, or you are too slow are not neg­a­tive com­ments. It is mere­ly how you per­formed in com­par­i­son to the op­po­si­tion in com­pe­ti­tion that is high­light­ed. 

With the ex­cep­tion of the play­ers and coach­ing staff, those who have been fol­low­ing the sport knew from the start of the Net­ball World Cup that the Ca­lyp­so Girls were fac­ing a chal­leng­ing cam­paign af­ter be­ing grouped with New Zealand, Sin­ga­pore and Ugan­da in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies first stage, and in Group G with South Africa, Ja­maica, and Wales in the sec­ond stage.

Any­body who knows net­ball and who fol­lows the sport knew the match­es that the Ca­lyp­so Girls would win and lose.

The end re­sults are not all that fans and sup­port­ers look at but the ef­fort is very crit­i­cal. The Ca­lyp­so Girls won just once in sev­en match­es.

I agree that net­ball should be in a much bet­ter place than it is now be­cause it re­mains the first and on­ly team sport in T&T to win a World ti­tle (joint win­ners with Aus­tralia and New Zealand at the 1979 World Net­ball Cham­pi­onship) played right here in T&T. It be­came the first sport to be en­act­ed by our Par­lia­ment.

Net­ball on­ly has it­self to blame for the state of the sport, not the fans or sup­port­ers but those who are trust­ed in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport.

Af­ter the tri­umph of 1979, T&T ex­port­ed its brand of net­ball to all parts of the Caribbean and the wider world to coun­tries like New Zealand, Aus­tralia, Eng­land, and Africa, and we have thou­sands of na­tion­als who are help­ing Amer­i­ca via clubs to build their game and in turn, they will be­come a force for us to have to reck­on with.

The con­cern could not be and should not be about what fans and sup­port­ers are say­ing but what is need­ed to keep the fans and sup­port­ers hap­py.