Watch how sports come!!

Is sports still a unifying force here in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG)? ‘Yes’ would obviously be the expected response.

However, the unfolding of several happenings shows that sports is slowly losing its unification purpose and the opposite is fast becoming the replacement.{{more}}

No one expects perfection in the manner in which community organizations, as well as national associations, are run, but at least there should be some level of acceptance which should not warrant a public spill.

Among some of the issues currently consuming the local landscape is the gripe between the St Vincent and the Grenadines Football Federation (SVGFF) and Nice Radio.

The ongoing vendetta, in which neither party wants to submit in the name of peace and good-will, speaks volumes for how far we have come as a people.

Both have taken on the pound of flesh approach, with no clear winner in sight.

Whatever the underlining reasons for the present impasse, it does not augur well for football and the development of sports in general.

Unfortunately, the leadership of the SVGFF is not one to back off from a fight and thrives on being combative, even if the good name of the sport is tarnished.

Which of the parties then will take the moral high road and let the matter be settled once and for all?

Also rippling and with a solution needed soonest is the fight for legitimacy for the administration of football in the North East belt, between the North East Football League, led by Otashie Spring and the revived Georgetown Area Sports Association (GASA).

The two are still at loggerheads over which body has the right to the North East Football Competition.

How soon can one be guaranteed a solution to the matter, as apart from the major players involved, it is dividing the people of the communities, as some have already chosen their allegiance.

But we have come to that stage in our development that unless there is some rift which must be played out beyond the confines of the organizations’ frameworks, then it is not business as usual.

Undoubtedly, the outlets of social media and the likes are the preferred choices to vent disgust at administrators who take delight in hammering it out at each other, rather than manning up and looking at the best interest of the sporting discipline they represent.

Also, organizations have allowed partisan politics to infiltrate them, thus causing a double divide in such organisations.

Of course, those who are in current political offices and those waiting in the wings to get in feast on such outbursts, as they believe in the end that they would be the beneficiaries of the outcomes.

Like other spheres of life, our modern sports administrators in the main have become too thin-skinned.

Most have taken on the notion that once someone is critical of another’s operations, or has a view which is different, that the intent is malice.

Our sports people are no longer holding to the belief that we can agree to disagree, while others have taken their positions as wielders of power and are hogging their posts as if they were divinely ordained.

The actions of those in posts of authority, more often than not, trickle down to the players themselves, who become helpless and hopeless, as there are hardly any persons now worthy of emulation.

The continuum is extended that organizations have no feet to stand on, as their dirty linen has been laundered for all to see and know.

Such happenings drive away the persons who still have that conscience of giving, as they would prefer to hoard what they have, than to invest in some sporting organization.

Hardly anyone stops to think that when all the bickering, the fallouts, the character assassinations are all carried out, and the desired objectives achieved, sports in SVG is no better.

In fact, we are regressing at a rapid rate, as most sporting bodies are tainted with uncalled for issues, if people take on that attire of humility and walk down a path of reconciliation.

Persons in positions of caretakers of sports here, once entrusted to lead, certain levels of professionalism should be given traits.

Too many persons with talent are lost from the fields and from the courts to other unlawful receivers, not because of lack of aptitude by those who carry out the actual playing of the sport, but what was not done by those who hold the positions of clout.