-hopes the GFF will provide funding to affected clubs
Frank ‘English’ Parris, Vice-President of traditional football heavyweight and Elite League member Santos Football Club says that the current Covid-19 pandemic will have a substantial financial impact on the operation of the club.
This was disclosed by Parris during an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday. According to Parris, “We have made investment and sponsors are not going to sponsor you if they don’t see a league is playing. They won’t sponsor because it’s like they are giving away their monies. It’s very hard of late to get sponsorship and sometimes you have to use your own monies and it will become harder because of the current situation.”
He added, “It has greatly affected us as we had some transfers like other clubs had and we were in the process of integrating them into our system and pattern of how we play. We had just started a four-week plan at the GFC ground and it became difficult because players were not accustomed to the pre-season and the numbers were not great.”
Asked if the GFF should provide funding to the clubs and association to alleviate some of the financial losses incurred, Parris said, “I think some funding should be given to the clubs and the associations to get football to be played when this situation is over. Without funding there is no football. We will need the funding to get the fans to come out and get the sport back on track.”
He added, “I am not sure what the GFF will do, I don’t know their plan. We don’t know if the league will play in the future or they will do a year-end tournament. They are not saying anything. There is no word as to a basic plan and I don’t know what direction the club is going to go. The federation has a key part to play in this, they are the key component in this entire thing.”
Parris feels that football will be setback by an entire season.
“I personally think that around the world football will be setback by an entire season, in Guyana maybe more than a season. Football wasn’t playing much and with this Coronavirus situation, it’s going to put a big strain on the whole country,” the football enthusiast said.
“It’s going to be difficult to acquire monies for the logistics of football. People or companies might decide to do other things with their monies or funding and we will be way behind when this pandemic ends”, he added.
