Herbert McPherson, long-serving head-coach of East Coast Demerara, heavyweight Buxton United, disclosed that the current Covid-19 pandemic has tremendously affected the administration and training regimen of the club.
This was revealed during an exclusive interview yesterday at the Stabroek Sport.
“The current situation has affected us a lot, at this moment we would be playing in tournaments at the senior level and playing junior football,” said Mc Pherson.
“The Elite League would be up and running now. At the club we are trying to keep our players motivated and encourage them to stay fit and healthy,” he added.
Mc Pherson said the future was unclear at best.
“We don’t know when this situation will change so it’s no use to have them work and over work themselves, we just want them to keep healthy and fit.
“The reality presently and even with this Covid-19 situation is that we are at a rebuilding stage. We lost quite a few players in the previous transfer window and we are starting a rebuilding process, we lost about seven starters so really and truly this current situation has given us a chance to rethink our strategy as a club. I just trust that we can possibly get some knew players in the impending window, the Covid-19 is very bad but it also created an avenue in that we can better ourselves as a club. The expectation as always is to remain in the league though.”
A founding member of the tournament, Buxton United finished the 2019 GFF Elite League season in the fifth position of 10 participants, behind winners Fruta Conquerors, Western Tigers, Den Amstel and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF).
Questioned how big of a setback the current situation will have on the state of football, he declared, “This is a huge setback. As for the GFF level, they had plans to implement new programmes for the ATC, after all I am in charge of the East Coast Demerara zone and we had just completed them before this issue in February. Since the launch of the ATC in 2017, there was never tournaments played between them and that was planned for this year. I really don’t know how we will get the motivation for the players for this and it’s a really big setback for us nationally.”
Asked if the GFF should provide funding to the clubs and association to alleviate some of the financial losses, he said, “I think they have had some discussions at the executive level of the club with the GFF. From my knowing so far, they have asked the club for some names to be donated some hampers. I don’t know if it is all the clubs. In terms of further assistance, I don’t have any information on that but I would trust that good sense would prevail. There have never been a situation like this before in the world and I don’t know of anyone who will not need a bailout.”
