National Sports Council awards ceremony cancelled

The awards ceremony of the National Sports Council (NSC) for 2015 has been cancelled because of a poor response from the various sporting associations.{{more}}

Deputy chair of the NSC Julian Burgin made this disclosure yesterday at a press conference at the Arnos Vale Sporting Complex.

Burgin explained that nomination forms had been sent to the various sporting organizations and only four were able to meet the deadlines set by the sporting council.

He said the deadline is normally the middle of December, but because of the general elections in December 2015, the council extended the date for submissions of nominations and also postponed the date of the event to March instead of February.

“The date, having been agreed in 2013 that we should have it in the first two weeks of February each year, with these nomination forms being submitted to the associations, the council waited for responses. By the December deadline we had about two responses; we extended the deadline to end of January and by the end of January we had only four responses,” he stated.

The NSC deputy chair also noted that with the failure of the associations to meet the revised deadline, a decision was made to cancel the awards ceremony, as to have the ceremony after March would make sporting individuals have to wait too long for their accolades.

“The council was put in a position where you had nothing to work with, nothing to present to the judges to make their final deliberations, no information and the time had gone that far. So, there was no alternative…but to cancel the event…the board will make a decision as to the way forward.”

Manager of the NSC Jomadene May also expressed his disappointment with the cancellation of the awards ceremony.

“It to me acts as an avenue where stakeholders in sports can collaborate in terms of development in sports. I am very disappointed…for sports to develop or for there to be a holistic development in sports, there needs to be collaboration.”

He noted that he does not foresee any development if there is no collaboration.

“I am looking forward for to us being able to come up with solutions that can help to push our awards in a more positive direction. We actually welcome the input of the associations; we are pleading for their collaboration, for their co-operation because this is what is needed…”

He stated that there are already plans in place to make the 2016 awards better. (CM)