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Donkeys, carrots, and sticks may not seem to be connected to cricket and football, but they are.   

Forty years ago, without the funding support that exists today, Bermuda's National Football Team, playing against Mexico, won the silver medal in the Pan American Games. That meant that tiny Bermuda - us lot - took on four bigger countries and beat them or held them [*].

   Thirty years ago, without the funding support that exists today, tiny Bermuda sent its National Football team into the CAC competition; beat other countries, and came away with the bronze medal.             

Twenty years ago, without the funding support that exists today, my brother 'Roddy' Burchall was Bermuda's National Football Coach. Playing at the old PHC 'stadium' in Warwick, the national team that he coached won a hard fought 2-1 match against the team that powerhouse Mexico sent to Bermuda.

   Twenty years ago, Roddy complained that people selected to play for Bermuda's national team were erratic practicers. In Roddy's opinion - as expressed to me - some of the team members [at that time] lacked the attitude and personal self-discipline that would make them turn up, every time, for scheduled team practices.

   This thread of a lack of personal self-discipline, now grown to a thick rope, runs through the two national sports that have received millions of taxpayer dollars. You see it in the forty and fifty and sixty inch waistlines of some of the national cricketers. You see it in the erratic practicing schedules and lifestyles of many of today's footballers.

   Bermuda's national cricket team waddled out to the wicket and surrendered to Guyana. Bermuda's national football team scrapes by with a draw against Cayman's after two clear losses to Puerto Rico, and a sorry string of other losses besides.

   But the fault doesn't lie only with the players. Go up to the coaches, the administrators, and the top management in each of those two sports. Go there.

  This group of managers and administrators are supposed to set the overall standard. But it's this group who don't have any standards at all. It's this group who selected the 'Miami Seven'. It's this group that accepts the forty, fifty, and sixty inch waistlines. It's this group that accepts non-practicing team members. It's this group that selects players whose club game performance demonstrates, at the lower club level, that they lack the attitude, the commitment, and the kind of self-discipline that is needed in the higher level national game.

   It's this group of managers and administrators who hold the purse strings. It's this group that can spend or NOT spend some of the millions of taxpayer dollars that were given to support national efforts in the game. It's this group that has the financial clout to set and demand standards of performance. It's this group that sends sixty-inch waisters and non-practicers overseas to play in international games where they represent all of us lot.

Jellybelly 'Sluggo' was a figure of fun in the Cricket World Cup. He certainly gave the rest of the world a comedic break.

Setting a new record low against Guyana is opposite to Bermuda's place as an excellent performer in the global insurance market. Bermuda's current run of dismal football defeats is a slap-in-the-face to those earlier Bermudians who, with no taxpayer's money, with much less in the way of training facilities, and with far less support from Bermuda's government and business community, trained hard, played well, and then went out and won silver and bronze medals against bigger powerhouse countries.

  To fix the problems in the two sports proclaimed as our national sports, we need to take two simple steps.

   First, get all the top managers and administrators. Put them on the start line at the National Stadium. All the rest of us get behind them. 'Ready, Set, Go!' Start kicking them in their arses. Kick them right around the whole field and out the South gate.

   Then start afresh with a brand new group who will impose standards - and not lower them every month; who will insist that selection is limited to people who possess the kind of disciplined attitude that's demonstrated by people like Clarence Hill, Shaun Goater, Antonio Pierce, Tyler Butterfield. Accept that, for a while, Bermuda may not compete in some international competitions; and work - in a disciplined fashion - towards the day when, once again, we can do what we used to do forty, thirty, and twenty years ago.

   The dollar carrot is not working! It's stick time!

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[*] Pan Am Games, Winnipeg, 1967. Bda in Group B. Drew with Cuba 1-1. Drew with Canada 1-1. Beat Trinidad 3-1. Beat USA 7-3. In final, Mexico beat Bda 4-0 in extra time - but we'd held Mexico to 0-0 at full-time.[[In-content Ad]]

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