Sport Minister Dr. Frank Anthony yesterday said he is pleased that the impasse between the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) and the Georgetown Football Association (GFA) has been resolved.
“It should have happened a long time but we are indeed very pleased that they have been able to resolve the matter. We hope that from now on they can move forward and we can see real development of football happening in our country and as you know this here would be a world class football field and it has all the dimensions.”
Minister Anthony was at the time addressing reporters at the site of the synthetic track on the progress of the facility.
“We have already spoken to the GFF about how we could partner them on the utilization of this facility and we will be meeting with them shortly on how we move forward. We have also spoken to them on the first Goal Project that is still incomplete and our hope is that they can fix that so that we can move on to get other such projects coming to Guyana.”
Dr. Anthony, in describing his meeting with CONCACAF’s President Jeffrey Webb said, “I have had a good discussion with the President of CONCACAF Mr. Webb and some of the things we discussed relates to how we move forward. So I am very optimistic and would like to say that what FIFA has done and what CONCACAF did is commendable and this is how regional and international organizations ought to behave with their local affiliates and I hope that this would be a good example for the West Indies Cricket Board.” According to him, had they come in and done an intervention like that many of the issues relating to cricket probably would have resolved by now.
“Unfortunately they have not done that and we still have issues with our cricket. As you know we have tabled a bill in parliament, that bill has gone to the Special Select Committee on cricket and we have all the parties being represented on that Special Select Committee.
The group, he said, had its first meeting on Friday where a chairman was appointed. “I am chairing that committee and our first meeting would be a at 16:30 hours in the parliament on Monday. So we will be working expeditiously to get this thing done and hopefully when it comes to the full assembly that we will have concurrence that we can move forward with normalizing cricket in Guyana.”
Dr. Anthony had at one point met the two parties the GFF and the GFA with the intention of being the mediator in helping the two bodies find a resolution. However, talks fell apart when the two sides stopped attending meetings.
