Former magistrate cum attorney-at-law Gordon Gilhuys yesterday told Stabroek Sport that he will be stepping down as President of the BK International Western Tigers Football Club.
Gilhuys said his decision to gracefully step aside comes in the wake of the steadfast stand taken by a majority of the players over the earnings from the recent Kashif and Shanghai football tournament.
Western Tigers captured the 20th anniversary tournament by defeating Alpha United 2-0 in the final on January 1.
The team netted $4M from the Kashif and Shanghai tournament; $1M first prize and $3M from Gold Target Export and Mark Interior Communications for their semi-final win over Pele.
Gilhuys said that the executives gave the players all of the earnings from the Kashif and Shanghai tournament win and $900,000 from the $3M incentive but the players want all of the money.
“You know the funny thing is that last year we say look as a motivational factor for the Kashif and Shanghai tournament coming up, we would give them (players) all the earnings from the tournaments we excelled at. We came second in the NAMILCO tournament and they had $200,000 and they had won $500,000 before that in the FUTSAL and on top of that for Christmas we gave each player between $10,000 and $20,000 as a gift from the club,” Gilhuys said.
“So for them now turning around and wanting all of it is ridiculous. Myself and the executives said to them that look, some of you guys are pretty old so we need to start investing in our youth programme and so we kept $2.1M for development.
“I mean it’s only fair and any club with proper vision would have done the same thing, this money is not in the pockets in any of the executive, it’s in Scotia Bank if they want they can go check.”
He said the club has a 60-40 ratio when dealing with the players with the players getting the majority.
Gilhuys said at a meeting on Saturday the players demanded more money.
“I said to my executives that I was not prepared to give them a cent more because we have to leave a substantial amount for future development,” he told Stabroek Sport.
