By Neto Baptiste
Coordinator of schools’ football, Rowan Benjamin, has raised concerns over the poor conditions of a number of playing fields utilised during the annual schools’ football league slated to start this week.
Benjamin, a former national coach, said a number of key fields are in unkempt conditions and currently unfit for play, a situation he believes is a result of uncertainty surrounding when or if the Antigua and Barbuda Football Association (ABFA) programme will start.
“I passed by All Saints [playing field] in Mack Pond and the state of what I saw there, tears almost came to my eyes because there is no way that Mack Pond should look like that and Mack Pond goals are broken. We may not use the Freeman’s Village field, but you can take a look there. I went out to Jennings and the goals are up but they are not properly erected, and you go to Golden Grove, it’s the same thing because the goals there are broken. I was in the PMS schools compound and the amount of bush I saw in there, and then when I looked outside and saw the field I said, wow,” he said.
The 2022 installment of the schools’ football programme is slated to start on Thursday and it will feature matches in the under-20 boys and girls divisions, under-16 boys and girls divisions and under-14 boys.
Benjamin is hoping the sports ministry could intervene and help to prepare the fields ahead of matches.
“It becomes even more difficult because at this time, you expect the ABFA to be looking to go into full swing, so the clubs will be practicing, and remember the clubs have to make the first cut [of the field] and the first mark [of the lines] before the ABFA comes in and would do the necessary cutting and marking,” he said.
The schools’ football league is expected to close by mid-January of 2023.