Advice, Encouragement and Direction for 2012

by Rollit Walrond Fri, Jan 20. 2012

Advice, Encouragement and Direction. That’s what is needed for sports to improve in SVG. The year 2011 ended with soccer players getting a surprise visit from Vincentian Ezra Hendrickson, a former national player and now one of the assistant coaches at the Seattle Sounders.{{more}} He held two talent search coaching sessions two days after Christmas. This holiday gift left players with their hopes high for 2012.

The over 70 players who attended shocked and surprised on lookers that actually arrived early. It is amazing how many don’t attend their own team practices regularly or on time, or have no coach, but were at the sessions hoping to be selected to turn professional.

While there is the need for an interpreter for dreamers, those who attended left some to believe that they are interested in becoming better players or are ready to migrate.

Understanding your team mate, their attitudes and movements, also outsmarting your opponents, are what team soccer is about. A coach can take a look at you in a game and can tell if you are an intelligent player.

Among the players’ weak areas were their ‘first touch’, something we have been hearing since the inception of our World-cup preliminaries 1992, almost twenty years ago. It is either that all the foreign technical directors who came and went did not correct those weaknesses while collecting huge salaries, or we did not learn anything to pass on.

Other areas which were identified for improvement were creating space, the correct support and distribution, which can only be achieved through total team practice with a trained and experienced coach. If correct measures are not reinforced, players will fall back into their comfort zone, losing the ball regularly. Those who are in charge are to be blamed.

If anything has been realized, I hope that players get a coach locally or foreign, possibly online, to improve their weak areas which was pointed out to them. In addition, Vincentians home and abroad have to share their knowledge; advising, guiding and encouraging players, officials and organizers.

We should also improve our soccer by forming clubs, with each member having a responsibility. There should also be premier leagues like all other countries. For example, England has the B.O.P – Barclays Premier League, the USA has the M.S.L – Major Soccer League. Then there are Italy, Germany, Mexico and Spain, which all have a premier League and have other Soccer competitions played in their various states and communities.

The Premier League generally hosts the best players, officials and clubs competing and carrying out the practices of proper development procedures and good governances.

It is good to encourage community competitions, as it is the foundation of the sport. It is also where young players gain their experience and confidence. At these competitions, the Premier League Coaches scout for talented players to join their club, which will be the next stage of their preparation for entering Semi and Professional Leagues. Presently, no-one can say what’s going on in soccer and what direction SVG is heading. Ask your boss, your parents, a fan or a spectator.

Sponsors can’t include soccer in their financial plans for 2012, there is not even a calendar program to guide the visitor, so it is imperative to have directions. We now have to wait on the new executive, which took office October 2011, but when will reinforcement of corrective measures start taking place? The few coaches there are in SVG need to form a committee and educate the affiliates and the country.

Sports and soccer all need support not only in finance, but also advice and encouragement. Players need to get off the block, balance the use of technology, limit the intake of alcohol, and regularly attend practices with conviction to develop themselves and the game.

I am asking all the radio program talk – sport hosts to ask callers to contribute to the topic by advising and encouraging players’ development and the benefits of being a club. To the churches, please include the topic in your sermon and to the writers of the various newspapers, your contribution is needed now more than ever. Remember you were a player, an official, an official, a spectator and a contributor. All have to contribute to this direction of development for SVG to join those successful countries.

The transition of this change or for any change will not be easy nor will be recognized over-night, therefore, I urge all to be patient, don’t give up advising and encouraging nor stop accepting. Together we can steer this direction of development upward in 2012. Your contribution will be accepted with open hearts and brain whenever you are ready to share.