Stadium grounds survive Soca Monarch

[dcs]

Trinidad Express
Sunday, February 26th 2006    
Stadium ok after record trampling
Terry Joseph

Manager of the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Wilfred Stephen yesterday said no permanent damage to the playfield or facilities has been noticed, after Friday night's record crowd for the TSTT International Soca Monarch competition final pranced until shortly before dawn of the following day.

Stephen praised the behaviour of patrons, noting that no damage to chairs or any of the fittings was evident. "They really behaved very well," he said, although late into the night there were reports of sporadic squabbles. A heavy police presence also helped to contain any unseemly conduct.

Soca Monarch creator and executive chairman of show producer, Caribbean Prestige Foundtion for the Performing Arts, William Munroe was not available for comment but the organisation's marketing director, Jack Alexis said extreme care had been taken to protect the stadium facilities.

"We took pains to work with the stadium's rules and concerns," Alexis said. "Areas of the turf that remained uncovered were deliberately left that way, as we were told that any covering might make conditions underneath worse, so we left the majority of the space without any form of overlay.

"The problem was that heat created by the friction of feet on felt would create a burn effect, so we were advised that, except the area was totally wet it should not be covered. You may have noticed that the space close to the stage was covered with felt, as we did for other high-traffic areas but we wet the felt beforehand to assist with cooling," Alexis said.

Use of the stadium for the historically well-attended show had raised certain anxieties within the sports community and holding the International Soca Monarch competition, it was felt, would wreck the turf but quite the opposite turned out to be the case.

Since a 1995 ban on events based on musical entertainment being held there, few large-scale concerts have been granted special permission to use the facility. During last year, only the command performance for Nigeria's President Oluwon Obasanjo and the Bollywood Awards enjoyed such permission.

For Carnival, the concourse outside the stadium's northern end was rented to Iwer George, who created Soca Broadway, a highly utilized party space and last weekend, promoter Cliff Harris was allowed use of the practice field for the annual Caribbean Brass Festival.

Promoters have been complaining about the scarcity of appropriate venues for big shows, with both the Public Service Association (PSA) ground and the Queen's Park Oval, former home of the International Soca Monarch contest, closed for renovations.