By Neto Baptiste
Former vice president of the Antigua and Barbuda Football Association (ABFA), Everton Richardson, said he has no regrets over two separate decisions to resign from the organisation during the late ‘90s and mid-2000s.
Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show, Richardson said that after attempts to change the direction in which the sport was headed from the inside had failed, he had no other option but to walk away.
“There are times when you see situations developing and I am not the type of person who is going to come out in the public and make noise. I’ll try to make changes. If you’re going down a particular road that I believe will lead to destruction, I would try from the inside to try and make it better, tell you to halt, check yourself, you’re going in the wrong direction and when I reach to the stage where I can’t take it no more, then I will walk away,” he said.
A former national and Five Islands player, Richardson said he had and still has a genuine love for the game and wanted to make a difference from within.
“Twice I resigned from the football association and it was the same situation and in the end, you saw of the things that came in subsequently. At that time, I really didn’t have that interest as such and not that I didn’t have an interest in football but it was a time when football in Antigua was in turmoil and I believe that I could help to make a difference and bring some stability back to the team and back to football in Antigua and that is why I got involved. Remember, I was on the normalising committee also before we were elected in 2004, because if it’s one thing I hate, is to see the players get hurt,” he said.
Richardson served under the presidency of Ralph Potter in the ‘90s before also serving under another former president, Mervyn Richards in the 2000s.