I am really disappointed to read in the Kaieteur News an article titled “Delinquent, dysfunctional AAG.” The writer, Rawle Toney, quoted Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) Vice-President Godfrey Munroe in the article in support of his view point.
Let me be the first to admit that the AAG has its internal issues like every other sports association in Guyana and around the world. Point to note is that Guyana was not the only country not present in Cali, Colombia for the World U20 Championships. The mighty China was not there either.
The AAG held an interactive sports conference and retreat in September at the GOA conference center to address our issuesNI have no brief to hold against the writer, he has a right to earn a living, so he can write whatever he wants.
I am really grieved by the comments made by Vice President, Munroe.
I would like to start from the position that both Munroe and I are heads of our respective associations and I am certain that, pound-for-pound, athletics has done much better than table tennis locally, regionally and internationally. Not only from results earned in competition, but from the number of national competitions held and international competition attended over the year.
Secondly, my attendance record and tardiness at GOA meetings is much better than his, even though he is a Vice President of that body.
So, please clean up your act before judging others. I, however, would like to address the issue at hand.
The AAG was late in its submission of names to the GOA due to our own internal issues which we are addressing. While some of our athletes opted not to be a part of the games because of the time of year, we did have quite a few who showed interest in going. Realizing that our 4X100m male team was the highest ranked event for us, there was much deliberation on who should be on the team 4 males and 4 females, as offered by the GOA.
The selectors decided to wait until the end of the Guyana Defence Force Inter-Unit Championship to come up with the final selection know that this was past the deadline. We were still hoping that we were going to be accommodated. After the GOA’s final due date, they refused to even entertain us submitting our list, stating that the portal for submission in Paraguay was closed. Therefore, they couldn’t help even if they wanted to. I attended the South American Athletics (Atletismo Sudamericano) congress in Sao Paulo Brazil on September 12th, 2022 and requested from Paraguay Athletics President, the opportunity for athletics to be accepted into the games. He immediately called the authorities in Paraguay and got a favorable response. He then told me to get in touch with the GOA in order to submit the list of athletes and it will be accepted. An email was sent to the GOA on the morning of September 13th with the required information for the athletics team entry for the games. To date, I have no official response from the GOA. I was expecting an email or even a phone call from the Acting General Secretary, Deion Nurse or even the Office Administrator Nalini McKoy saying “yes” or “no” to our listing.
For the GOA to sink to the point of Munroe’s utterances regarding a member federation in a daily newspaper as a response to a request is really appalling. Well, I am very scared for the future of the Guyana sporting fraternity, if this is the new means of engagement. Or is it just for the Silly Season (elections time).
I have requested in the past, and I will continue to implore that the GOA should be more accommodating and offer more assistance than to be punitive to member federations. The AAG is really trying to do better and instead of assisting us, they choose deny us the opportunity when they know they could have helped. They have access to much more resources than any of its members. I wonder if Munroe knows the amount of meets we host and sanction on a yearly basis, if he knows this, then he should realize that it is not by fluke or magic that we had 5 qualifiers (note well: not universality spots; qualifiers) for World U20, but we needed the administrative and financial help to get them there and we got none from the GOA.
