Failure to develop female football in the Rupununi will eventually lead to young women losing interest in the sport, according to senior footballer Lorian Toney.
Toney in an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport Sunday last at the St. Ignatius Ground, Lethem, said that already girls are beginning to lose interest.
“Right now there are tournaments in Annai and Aishalton but in Lethem there are no female tournaments.”
She said, however, that many of the senior girls in Lethem and other parts of the Rupununi play competitive football in neighboring Brazil.
Toney said while it is excellent that the girls are getting the opportunity to play football they prefer to have the tournament organised by their association, the Rupununi Football Federation (RFA,) which according to her has not been doing much in the area of football development in general.
“We are not getting any football functioning so far, they have Brian Rodrigues for the Vice-Chairman for the association and that is hard because he is the only person that holds the station and it is not fair to footballers in the Rupununi, both male and female.”
Toney also noted that comments made which did not find favour with the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) and the RFA saw things going downhill, mainly from the RFA under the previous administration.
“Senior female footballers leave here to go to Georgetown every year for a tournament and preparation for us was not right, meals for us were not right, they promised us gear and we did not get them and I had said that “young players coming up – it does not make sense you promise them things and don’t do it because saying it and doing it are two different things.”
The situation, she said, never got better as the same trend continued and this was not good for the junior females who were getting involved in the sport. Many of them in school found it difficult to purchase gear and it was heartrending to have the RFA make promises to them and not full them.
The younger girls, she said, always look for gear when they are promised but they only get their hearts broken with another sad story.
“The young ones from the Savannah we always sub and buy gear for them or even if we don’t have enough we go out and seek donations or keep a fun day where we control the gate or the bar just to get enough money to buy gear for the younger ones from the Savannah.”
Senior players, she said, also from time to time would put their hands in their pockets and assist with gear if it is too late to seek donations.
Four juniors, she noted, have already left the sport because of the lack of competition.
The motivation, she said, for many of the young females taking up the sport was hearing of the exploits of the senior players and then they too wanted to experience it.
“The game like you, you like the game and you make the extra effort to do it but if we don’t get help we will be struck down all the time.”
After a two-month hiatus last week females in Lethem were involved in a competition in memory of former national player, Parks.
“You will find guys playing football by themselves, but no organised football at all. I keep saying it over and over again we need to see improvements in female football. As a senior footballer we have the talent in Region 9, but enough is not being done.”
Toney said that she has hopes that things will get better for the sake of the younger players as she and many other senior players despite their difficulties still feel that sense of pride to have been given the opportunity to not only represent their region, but also Guyana.
Vice-President Rodrigues, performing the duties as president, told Stabroek Sport in his interview that while he understands the frustration of the players he will not be focusing on the mistakes of the past, but will be looking to forge ahead with the development of the sport on both fronts, male and female.
“Now that I am in a top position, acting that is, we are doing a proposal to be sent to the GFF to see what assistance they can give to assist in the development. . . . what we want to do is to engage them from now and see what assistance we can get, because the Rupununi has lots of potential in both male and female football.”
Asked about the apparent lack of interest on the part of the RFA, Rodrigues said that the Rupununi is a very big place and if the association is to organise competitions it would be difficult to get the various teams from their locations to one central point because of transportation difficulties.
“It is very expensive and you get less competition because of that and the business community they do a bit . . . but not enough to sustain the kind of competition we would like to see in the Rupununi among the teams from the outlying areas. Because if you are really going to develop football as a region you need to get all involved.”
Asked about the presence of football officials in the region, Rodrigues said: “Because of the little interest that the previous administration in football showed they never really get things together, so we had a decline because of the lack of competitive football played in the region.”
The Rupununi over the years has produced a number of talented footballers who have played at the national and international levels.
