Too much Confusion

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During the past week sports enthusiasts in St Vincent and the Grenadines may well have experienced some of the consequences of inadequate planning for sports development.
Of course this is nothing new. However, one would have imagined that at this stage we would have learnt to do better.

Development of fields
In previous articles the point was made that the relevant authorities seemed not to have had things fully in hand relative to the development of playing fields across the nation. There seems to be certain haphazardness in respect of where fields are located and which fields are developed when. Much of this has been determined more by the politicians in their zeal to win votes than by the needs of people and the pertinent national sports association.
The result has been that one is never able to ascertain from the National Sports Council the true state of playing fields in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
For several months the community across the Dry River has been involved alongside the National Sports Council in the development of the London Playing Field. Here again the delays appear to have been more related to political wisdom than anything else. The people wanted to use the field for months now.
The nonsense of the ground at Calvary is another example of politicking rather than genuine facilities development.
In the meantime, several playing fields are crying out for attention with no one seemingly willing to listen.
Too much politics currently hampers the development of playing fields across the nation.

CWC 2007
The advent of the Cricket World Cup 2007 preparations in St Vincent and the Grenadines for warm up matches next year has served to highlight the inefficient manner in which we often operate.
At one time we were given the impression that the grass from Sion Hill was being moved to Stubbs and the grass from Arnos Vale would be taken to Sion Hill. Then Arnos Vale # 1 would be the sole beneficiary of the more modern grassing process.
Now it seems that the fine print of the documentation has been sufficiently read and understood and the three fields being used by the teams while here for the warm up matches, even for practice, must be of the same quality surface.
This latter information means that suddenly the National Sports Council is given the onerous task of quickly determining where to carry the grass being removed from both Sion Hill and Arnos Vale # 1.
Given that the NSC is not the most efficient of organisations in the state, one could readily understand the magnitude of the problem that this task has posed for the organisation.
Over the past week therefore, when the grass was being taken up from the aforementioned playing fields the NSC was hastily taking it to fields all across the country, many of which are in no position to immediately make use of the grass provided.