By Neto Baptiste
An adequate number of coaches within the schools’ football programme continues to be an issue as the football department within the Ministry of Sports prepares for the start of its 2022 competitions.
This is according to coordinator of schools’ football, Rowan Benjamin, who said that presently, they rely on teachers in some schools who double as coaches during the competitions.
“I had 15 coaches including myself, and I am down to 14 now, and one would have slipped away without me knowing, not even the director knew. Irene B Williams is without a coach, and in terms of the Antigua Grammar School, since Debu [Rolston Williams] died we haven’t had a coach there, so we asked Chesley Browne [a teacher]. I have put in to the director that these people must be compensated. Devita Tittle at PMS, she deals with the girls and also Roddrick Williams at Pares. They are teachers, but if we are going to utilise their service for the programme to go on, then they have to be remunerated,” he said.
Admitting it would be ideal to employ more coaches on a permanent basis, Benjamin said it may not be practical from a budgetary standpoint. He added however that a recommendation has been made for those teachers doubling as coaches to be compensated.
“I really think it’s how we utilise what we have really. We cannot put a coach in every school and I don’t think the government is going to look at that, but what we can do is employ coaches on a six months or whatever basis and I think that will help out a lot,” he said.
The 2022 competition was slated to start this week with a knockout, but it has been postponed by one week to accommodate a request by some schools for additional preparation time.
“We put back the preseason, or I should say knockout, by a week just to give the schools a little more time to get themselves sorted out, so we’ll start next week Thursday. If everything had gone to plan, we would have been having maybe eight weeks before we actually start to play our league football, which means that because the league is starting the 6th of October, and we’re playing this pre-season, at least the schools would have at least a month,” Benjamin said.
The league is expected to close by mid-January of 2023.