Warner: Regional football, cricket should share equal place

FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has made a call for the two prime sporting disciplines in the Caribbean--football and cricket--to work hand in hand for steady progress to be achieved.

Warner, after meeting with Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson and Minister of Sport Esther Byer-Suckoo in Barbados last weekend, urged the respective authorities and stakeholders to forge new relationships, in an attempt to put West Indies cricket back on the world map.

He blasted the decision by regional cricket authorities, excepting Trinidad, to prevent football matches from being played at cricketing facilities, which are among the best in the region.

"We have some of the best facilities in the world which are cricket stadiums and it makes no sense not sharing these for the development of other sports, particularly football. You have countries like Guyana and Antigua, for instance, where their national teams cannot find a proper ground to train on or play matches, because they are saying the main venue is solely for cricket, and this cannot work and what I am merely saying is let's work together to help raise the level of both sports," Warner said.

"I will get knocked for saying this, but unless cricket has a transfusion of new ideas, concepts, people and structures, it will die. It will not survive because of Twenty20 and what you have seen in South Africa in the last few weeks will not help either.

"This is not to take any pleasure or joy from cricket's demise, but it is to say that there is room in all countries for the two sports to survive...countries with limited resources should share facilities. Football is denied a venue from Guyana to Antigua," said Warner, adding that the pattern in the region was unlike Trinidad, where the Queen's Park Cricket Club was willingly making its venue available to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation for the staging of matches at no cost to the governing body.

"These facilities can be shared by all. There are no sacred grounds in today's world of technology. I want to appeal to governments to open a window for football. The national flags should never be flown on fields of war but they are always flown on the fields of sport and moreso football," Warner repeated.

He appealed to Thompson to try to influence his Caribbean colleagues to adopt a new way of thinking for the development of sport.

"If it's one thing I ask of you, is that you try to convince your colleagues on the importance of sport and let them see the benefits of such involvement through sport tourism thrusts etc."

Thompson, in his address at the Barbados FA awards ceremony, thanked Warner for his support in the development of regional football, adding that his Government has already outlined measures to develop football on that island and will support the establishment of a Professional League in two years.

Minister Byer-Suckoo touched on the strategic goals of the new administration to eliminate the problems of old as they related to limited and/or inadequate facilities to stage sporting events locally and the ongoing process of negotiations to make Kensington Oval available for a wide cross-section of activities. - Trinidad Express Newspaper