Brian Jordan, organiser of the Next Level Consultant Ltd (NLCL) Under-19 and U-15 youth football tournaments, will be making a strong bid for the presidency of the Southern Football Association (SFA) when the annual general meeting (AGM) and elections take place at the Mannie Ramjohn Stadium in Marabella on Thursday (April 27) from 7.30 pm.
Backed by an equally strong team of Kirwin Weston (first vice president), Jefferson George (second vice president) and other hardworking members such as Anita Sennon, former FIFA referee Jaghernath Goolcharan and Andy Smith, the team promises to bring back the crowds and the zeal that once signified the sport in the southland.
They will be up against a team led by Eddison Dean, a former Super League vice president who will again contest the position of second vice president of a slate being headed by businessman Dennis Latiff.
Latiff was the man behind the sponsorship of the Tiger Tanks Under-20 Championships. He will have on his team the former “Strike Squad” goalkeeper Michael Maurice as the secretary (administration), Aldwyn Williams (secretary operations) and Joseph Rooplal who will contest the position of public relations officer.
Yesterday, Jordan told Guardian Media Sports of his plans, saying: “We are building from a base because for years the SFA has gone backwards, but I know the folks there, the incumbents, have been trying their best, but in spite of that, we’ve had lowering numbers in terms of participation, lowering numbers in terms of energy and enthusiasm, so we expect to bring that back, much like we have done with the NLCL tournament.
“The NLCL tournament has been around since 2019 and we’ve built from 10 teams to 16 at the Under-19 level, and from nothing to 14 teams at the U-15 level, so we expect to do the same at all levels with the SFA, youth football, women and girls and senior football, so we are excited.”
According to Jordan, as the owner of his own company, they will seek to make investments in the sport in the southland.
“Clearly the SFA, until recently, has not paid out any prize monies to teams that have put out energies. Certainly, at the end of a season, you want to be rewarded, so we are putting things in place to ensure that there will be prize-giving ceremonies and awards and so on.
“Funding is coming in and NLCL is our company, so we would certainly want to invest.
“To pull off a victory, we have to rely on the members agreeing that we are the better choice, and so we have been talking to them, we’ve been having online meetings, bringing folks from the USA online to talk to them about how we get our youths outside in terms of youth cups and so on over there.
“We’ve been talking about how we work in a post-covid environment, so the teams know we’ve been kind of embedded with them.
“We believe in bottom-up development versus a lot of folks who believe in top-down. Anything that is top-down has a tendency to not be as stable, we all know about the pyramids in Egypt, they are bottom-up development.
“We believe in building pyramids, that’s what we are planning to do and I think we have a strong chance to do that.”
Jordan concluded by saying there has not been youth football in the SFA for quite some time now: “So yes, we would jump in right away and bring in academy football. We have girls’ and women’s football which we haven’t had ever and certainly, we will have age-group football along with senior football, once we get in there.”
SOURCE: T&T Guardian