The sud­den pass­ing of Richard Fakoory was shock­ing to the peo­ple who have fol­lowed sports in T&T.

Re­cent­ly, he was just about tak­ing the ini­tia­tive in lift­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive process which could prob­a­bly bring new ideas to the foot­ball struc­ture as a whole.

Know­ing Richard for more than 30 years, one could recog­nise the epit­o­me of a man whose ded­i­ca­tion to as­sist­ing the young men through sport was much more than the goals they score. Pleas­ant, a good lis­ten­er, and some­one who is al­ways in search of re­me­di­al cir­cum­stances, es­pe­cial­ly when he was able to use his busi­ness acu­men to bring an ex­cel­lent con­tri­bu­tion.

There is a need for cor­rec­tion for the prob­lems that have been re­tard­ing the progress of some fac­tors of sport, es­pe­cial­ly foot­ball.

The for­mer Rangers own­er's pass­ing has just dropped the jaws of the peo­ple who dealt with him on mat­ters which are some­times filled with the du­bi­ous sub­stance to the game of foot­ball. My sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of Richard and the mas­ter knows what is best for such a fine per­son and fam­i­ly man. May he rest in peace.

With the chang­ing of ad­min­is­tra­tive lead­ers in West In­dies crick­et re­cent­ly, who knows if a sim­i­lar in­stance could be near­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of our foot­ball.

It was in­ter­est­ing that fa­mil­iar be­hav­iour in both Re­gion­al Crick­et and lo­cal foot­ball, that there is a des­per­ate need for a change of lead­er­ship in both as­so­ci­a­tions.

With an out­ward burst of con­fi­dence by Dave Cameron as he pre­dict­ed that he was cer­tain to win be­cause he was promised the num­ber of votes which would send him to the top. What a dream­er! And more so, a man who hon­est­ly be­lieve that his er­rors of judg­ment were more than the peo­ple sit­ting around his ta­ble at meet­ings.

It cer­tain­ly was not “Tricky Ric­ki” who blew him away, but his own col­leagues who may well have recog­nised the el­e­ment of in­com­pe­tence which was dis­played for the pe­ri­od of six years. Ricky Sker­rit was a sav­iour who passed by in time­ly fash­ion, not on­ly to chal­lenge the for­mer Ja­maican pres­i­dent, but was a well-known per­son whose ad­min­is­tra­tive in­tel­li­gence over the years in the Caribbean, had been demon­strat­ed by be­ing a suc­cess­ful Man­ag­er of the West In­dies crick­et, and al­so a min­is­ter in the gov­ern­ment of St. Kitts/Nevis.

Those who knew him well enough would have vouched for his lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, plus the re­sults of his or­gan­ised work eth­ic.

Now, I have to ad­mit that I ex­pect­ed both these gen­tle­men to present in writ­ing to the peo­ple of the Caribbean, the fun­da­men­tals of ad­min­is­tra­tive po­ten­cy which will im­prove the di­a­tribe which showed up in our Crick­et, al­most as poor­ly as Foot­ball's TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Of course, No one would ex­pect that we must have a one-man show in these great sports. Ricky's first step ap­pears to have had some com­mu­ni­ca­tion with for­mer coach Phil Sim­mons who was fired by Cameron in 2016, which sat­is­fied both par­ties and gained a so­lu­tion. Ex­cel­lent.

The job is not fin­ished. There must be per­son­nel which would han­dle ef­fi­cient­ly the de­part­ments of Fi­nanc­ing, Mar­ket­ing, a sol­id for­mat of coach­ing which must be­gin with the young ones through­out the re­gion. I thought that I heard a com­ment from the new pres­i­dent about util­is­ing the UWI branch­es in Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica for place­ment of coach­es (The proven ca­pa­ble ones we hope).

My next ques­tion is: why can the UTT not be used as a groom­ing ground for our crick­eters. I would al­so like to have heard of the re­struc­tur­ing of Com­pe­ti­tions in West In­dies crick­et.

That is a key fac­tor, as it will guide the path for the best play­ers in each for­mat to rep­re­sent the re­gion. This was a huge fail­ure, hence the rea­son why it was on­ly the en­ter­tain­ment of the T20 match­es which at­tract­ed the crowds. No one recog­nised the de­fi­cien­cy in the or­tho­dox meth­ods of plan­ning to play vary­ing in­nings for each for­mat, whether it be in bat­ting and bowl­ing. How­ev­er, the ath­leti­cism dis­played by the field­ers was re­mark­able and we have seen the best catch­es or run out de­ci­sions among each two-hour show.

Good luck to Ricky Sker­rit and his con­tin­gent.