– says Brian Joseph
-feels Linden is neglected and rejected
Lack of commitment from some executives coupled with poor club structure and inadequate sponsorship were the demerits of football in Linden for 2009, says President of the Upper Demerara Football Association (UDFA) Brian Joseph.
The UDFA boss spoke exclusively with Stabroek Sport from his Co-op Crescent business location about his association’s failures which certainly surpassed their success in 2009.
Over the past months, Joseph was widely criticized for the way the game has been managed.
However, Joseph, who was once a celebrated national player, made it clear that he too was dissatisfied at the state of football in Linden over the past year.
“The clubs are not happy, I am not happy, I mean anyone who has football at heart can’t say that they are happy with what took place in 2009 but hopefully in 2010 things would improve.
“I don’t know what will be the changes, but I know they are going to be some changes but I just hope football will get back to the top where it once was,” Joseph said.
He alluded to several factors that contributed to their failure last year with the primary reason being the lack of sponsorship from businesses, both in and out of Linden.
“We, really haven’t been able to secure much funding from the businesses in Linden. We have a number of persons coming on board, you know, giving some amount that really helps out like a little $20,000 or $25,000 in trophies and that kind of stuff that we were able to put into our tournaments but it really still didn’t go a long way in terms of us running the tournaments as we like,” Joseph noted.
He said that he believes Linden is neglected, rejected and often forgotten by some the country’s big businesses who should be giving back to the community that supports their businesses.
“I think that some of these companies really take places like Linden for granted because you can see tons of trucks from outside of the community showing up on a daily basis and these are the same entities that don’t see it fit when you approach them for sponsorship to contribute anything but yet still they benefit from sales and so on in Linden. So I hope that these people recognise that they have a role to play in development and get on board.”
However, Joseph disclosed that they have a plan to try and ease the regular companies like Banks DIH and Ansa Mc Al which have pack programmes.
He said that “have basically highlighted a couple of companies that we would like to bring into the game and hopefully that would work. Last year we tried consulting with the Georgetown Football Association (GFA) concerning some of the sponsors that they have but it didn’t work out. But the new strategy is to attract a lot of people who haven’t been directly involved in the game.”
Apart from the view that the present administration was not doing anything for the sport of football in Linden, the clubs affiliated to the UDFA believe that the executives are not functioning properly.
Joseph acknowledged this and stated that it was simply because…“a few people don’t make the effort that is really required to move this thing forward and they left.”
Meanwhile an area of much concern is the annual general meeting and election of office bearers which the UDFA president said it is at a standstill because of the improper club structure at present.
“At this stage we are looking at February for the next election and that has to do with a lot of the clubs and their structures because if they are not properly structured we can’t have elections. So right now the focus is on getting the structures in place.”
