Matthew: Antigua cannot host home matches

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Despite qualifying for the next round of matches in the FIBA AmeriCup 2021 event, the Antigua and Barbuda senior men’s team, the Bulldogs, will not be able to host their set of home matches.
This news comes only a day after the team arrived home from Suriname as Minister of Sports Daryll Matthew made the announcement on Monday on the Good Morning Jojo sports show and further explained the reason behind this decision.
“Having advanced to the next round we’re playing home and away games starting September 13. The biggest issue that we are going to have though is the ability to host a home game because FIBA’s minimum requirements for the home facility or any facility to host a FIBA sanctioned game is between 2,500 to 3,000 seats in your arena, and as it is today, we do not have a facility that can hold 2,500 persons and we’re not going to get one before September and that is the challenge we’re going to be faced with.”
The Minister who also holds the position as the Treasurer of the Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) however stated that discussions have begun into renting a facility in the neighbouring countries to host the event.
“There have been a couple of discussions and there’s a manual that’s going to be sent to the local association [ABBA] but you know there were a couple of venues tossed like Puerto Rico of course, someone suggested why not New York where they have a huge Antiguan population and it’s very accessible to local Antiguans and you rent the facility for the day…..but the fact is that we can’t host a home game here in Antigua despite having gotten a grant from the Chinese and having them build the King George facility we still cannot.”
The Bulldogs created history with their highest finish to date, second place in the regional tournament that resulted in them advancing to the next round.

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