Tell me who is really telling the truth?

01.APR.10

Editor: I am a national player of the women’s national football team. I was away with the team in Guyana recently, but when I read Mr. Carrington’s report, I had to write about the real truth. We lost 1-0 against Suriname and 1-0 against Guyana, but we played well and we could have won the two games. Players were on the field fighting hard to win, fighting against 15 players, 11 players and the the referees.{{more}}

Mr. Carrington, what you said to the Searchlight weren’t the same words you told us after the two games or even at the VIP room at the airport in front of the President Mr. Delves, the Vice President Mr. Sardine and Mr. Small. You told us to hold our heads up high because we didn’t go out and give up, we fought till the end, you told us that the two opponents weren’t so strong, and not as you had expected. You said we could have won both games!!!! The Surinamese didn’t even have 3 shots on our goal, and the Guyanese didn’t have 5 shots on target against us either. While I was in the stand watching the Guyana and Suriname game, I saw the Guyanese team splitting the Surinamese defence more than 10 times, and that didn’t happen in our game, no more than 2 or 3 times, so that means our defence was much better than their forwards and attackers.

The Guyanese team was packed with more than 11 foreign based players who play in colleges in Canada and America, and these girls have been playing together for a long time because, Vincentians, you should have seen the touches they had and how they didn’t even have to look to know where their players were. So how come they didn’t give us like 5-0 or even 10-0?

Vincentians, another thing you should look at is that the Guyana team gave Suriname 2-0 but gave us 1-0, so please read between the lines. Mr. Carrington, you are the T.D. of the SVG Football Federation and you said that the Guyanese team did their homework for that competition, so is it the players’ fault that you did not do yours? Don’t you think that if you had done your homework we would have come back victorious? My captain Akiria Samuel is the best captain I have ever played under. She has good leadership skills, she always speaks for the good of the team and she played 2 extraordinary games. We had a meeting before we played Guyana and she gave suggestions to the coaches of what she thought was best for the team to go out and play, she gave them her line up and I think that if the coaches took some of her ideas that we would have done better. Maybe if the coach had put on the right players to play for both games the score would have been different, because all the TD and the coach do is argue with one another right in front of the players.

I also think that the TD should have stayed at home and saved some of the Federation’s money and let the captain have the kind of say he had with making decisions because he did absolutely nothing to help the team at home on the training ground or in Guyana. Where were you when the team was training for the competition, instead of coming months before and work with the team, you came and had a big argument with the coach right in front of the players, so what kind of respect is that? Why did you not fire the coach? He is a paid employee, you are his supervisor, and it was obvious when you were together you did not agree with his methods. After the argument you did not come back until a week or 2 before we travelled, and you were trying to implement things that would take months to understand. Why not ask the coach why the team was so poor after 20 months of coaching with him? Why not ask the coach why he played players in totally wrong positions? Why did he train one player as a defender for 20 months and then when he brought her on against Guyana, he put her up as a striker?

Is the Federation this wealthy?

I remember hearing the TD say that he was not in Guyana to stress out himself; he is there to relax. When calling him to 2 meetings that the team had, he said that he was going to sleep. Did you even take players for any 1 on 1 discussion, because you didn’t have any 1 on 1 with me for sure? This thing is still on my mind: Why was Kathy Badenock there on the trip with us? She came in on the 5th and left on the 8th. Can someone please tell me why would a team need a fitness trainer in the middle of world cup qualifying games? Why would she be needed for only one game? Or is the Federation so wealthy that they could send someone to Guyana just to do warm up and cool down for 1 game?

Barcelona and Liverpool don’t even do that kind of stuff, and these people are wealthy. If the Federation had so much money to waste in such a fashion, why didn’t they spend it on better quality accommodation and food when we were in camps? Another thing is that we ate crystal unsalted rice, the worst kind of fish I have ever eaten and cool aid juice for a week, and players weren’t eating or not eating enough because the food was poor every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. So maybe that is some of the causes why we didn’t come back victorious. Unfortunately, the manager was also sick for more than half of the tour, and there were players looking after the manager instead of the manager looking after players. Mr. Carrington, you did not even write about the 2 goals we scored in the 2 games. One of the goals was called offside, and the lines woman called a handball for the other goal but she didn’t know whose hand the ball had hit. Plus the referee was right there but claimed not to have seen it. The referees were treating us so bad, we could not even touch the opponents or they were blowing free kicks against us. Maybe what someone should really think about doing is right now is to protest about the goal instead of trying to betray the team. Why did the Federation agree to play with home developed officials? It is not allowed in FIFA’s rules of competition. The games were taped by the TD, so why not show them to the public and let us really see if we were no match for the 2 teams, let the public of St. Vincent and the Grenadines see for themselves what really went down and we will see who is really telling lie.

It is insulting to have to put up with the lies and double standards which are done to the women’s team and not to the men’s team. The men’s team would not put up with the abuse and unfair actions that we have had to put up with. The Federation think they know what they are doing, but they don’t. Here is easy proof.

In 2007 when the executive took over the Federation the Men’s team was ranked 73rd in the world. Today they are 168th !!!! The women’s team was ranked 101st, now we have lost our ranking because we have not had any international games since 2006.

So, Mr. Carrington, take a good look INSIDE yourself and your executive and examine where the real weaknesses exist.

Footballer