Wayne Forde, President of Fruta Conquerors said yesterday that he was personally not in support of the alleged no-confidence motion filed against Guyana Football Federation (GFF) President Christopher Matthias by the East Coast and East Bank of Demerara associations.
Speaking via telephone during an exclusive interview, Forde said: “My reason for not supporting it was when Troy Mendonca was President of the then Georgetown Football League (GFL) and I was the first Vice-President, I recalled that the then GFF President Colin Klass and some of the people of who are conspiring now, came together and installed an IMC for the GFL when it was completely uncalled for.”
He noted: “Everyone knows what happened there. Football suffered tremendously during the reign of the GFL/IMC body. Some of the major losses were GT&T and many other sponsors that had worked with the Troy Mendonca body inclusive of Courts Guyana Incorporated.”
Forde said the then IMC’s conduct was unprofessional.
“The conduct of the then executives of the IMC was most unprofessional and the behavior of the General Council of the IMC descended to the lowest ever with the most statutory of meetings being abruptly abandoned because of the anarchy that ensued.
“My view is that the sub associations should think very carefully about the individuals they might think would serve Guyana football well. They just need to look at the past and the present to make a judgment,” added Forde.
Questioned about the implications of such an action against the GFF boss, Forde said “The people that are obviously maneuvering to move this no-confidence should ask themselves how many deeds of negative publicity does football need before every sponsor walks away from the sport.
“From my knowledge, because I have done my own research, there are no provisions within the rules and statutes of FIFA that provide for a vote of no-confidence against a sitting president of the GFF,”
According to Forde “I believe everyone has the right to have some concern in which the new GFF has been functioning and, as a football administrator, I have my concerns. Many of us were expecting significant turnarounds from the past. I think that we have very little tangible evidence that the situation has really changed.”
He went on: “The general public and football administrators like myself don’t expect the work and tidying up take to forever. So when we see manoeuvers where some key individuals appear to be manoeuvering key actors within the football family to bring a vote of no confidence against the president, we understand why they would do it. Personally I do not support it.
“I think that in all fairness to the executive of the GFF, considering the mountain of problems they would have inherited, it would be natural they would take time to sort out everything,” he said.
“Right now the GFA is in excess of 20 million dollars in debt following the conclusion of the Banks tournament and in my humble opinion, I believe no one who was part of the GFA executive during that period should be eligible to run for any football office, this is because for the simple reason they have failed to explain to the General Council of the GFA how they chalked up so much debt and what are their plans to service the debt of which my club is one of the creditors that they owe huge sums for use of the facility for two consecutive tournaments.”
He continued “Anyone who wants to run football at the club and sub-association level, needs to understand the value of bringing in sponsorship. We clearly have evidence that some of these folks do not have the ability to bring in sponsors,” ended Forde.
