Needing A Good Kick Up The Backside.

If there is one thing I really cannot tolerate about how things go in this fair isle it's the fact that complaining is a sport where Bajans would have great Olympic prowess but doing is still a work-in-progress. Few people seem to realise that grumbling and groaning alone changes diddly squat.

"Come on, Jonesy! Do you want me to come on and kick it for you?" one of my football coaches used to scream. I get the same feeling when I read about the disasters of the national soccer team. Maybe I should drag my 50-plus year old body out and give them all a good kick up the a***.

As a former footballer, coach, referee, etc.--said it enough times now--I know a bad set up for developing football when I see one. So what is it about the way that things don't get done here that leaves the national team crying the same tears into their glasses of milk as they did a few months ago? (see Nation News report). Captain Norman Forde is blaming the team's inadequate preparation over the past three weeks for their winless performance and early exit from the Digicel Caribbean Championships Finals

Wasn't it a mere few months ago that the Bajan team was complaining about how they were badly prepared for their matches against the US in the World Cup, when they got thumped by something like a cricket score (see Convince Me Please). Some lame stories about how the Americans practised with balls while the Bajans had to practice with coucou rolled up in paper mache. Injustice! Which part of "not learning any lessons" is not being taken seriously? Pathetic!

The team, called the "Tridents", and those who manage and organize its football need to have those three prongs shoved up somewhere sensitive. The team trains on a piece of land (the YMCA field) where you would not even grave cows. Their warm-up match before playing Jamaica was their own under -17 national squad. Result? Don't ask. The referee robbed the team. Please. Imagine Michael Phelps racing against his gold fish in his mum's pond in preparation for the Olympics. Imagine Usain Bolt running in some hobnailed boots against a blind donkey in Trelawny in preparation for his quests in Beijing. Make sense?

I'm sure that Bajans would like to have some sporting success but they don't seem to have a clue about how to go about making improvements to a shoddy situation. Afterwards, the litany of excuses would embarrass a schoolboy who had just tried to tell his teacher that his pet weevil had eaten his house and that his homework was buried under the now rotted house. Who cares if another team like Grenada is better or not on paper? The match is played on grass. Duh!

As many good coaches say, "Just do your job!" If not, give us all a break. At least they did not manage to disgrace themselves totally, like some of the players in the following video: