Guyana Football Federation (GFF) boss Wayne Forde says that the participation of several national players in an unsanctioned football tournament in Buxton could have derailed the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers training camp if an outbreak of Covid-19 cases was detected during testing.
Speaking at a press conference held on Tuesday at the GFF’s National Training Center in Providence, Forde said, “So apart from breaching the regulations, when a player or a group of players chooses to go into an environment where there are no COVID-19 restrictions, where it hasn’t been approved by the COVID-19 Task Force, it hasn’t been sanctioned by the GFF, and they run the risk of coming back into the programme and then the next testing, we would have had an alarming outbreak of positive cases.”
He added,”Then the entire programme would have been derailed. And sometimes, when I see the reaction from the public and even some quarters of the media, to things like this, it really troubles me as to where their minds really are because we are making huge investments here. And we have to protect those investments.”
The national players who were suspended for their participation in an unsanctioned event in Buxton have faced the disciplinary committee. The players, who were initially suspended for more than 10 days, are Trayon Bobb, Kelsey Benjamin, Nicholas McArthur, Kevin Dundas and Sese Norville.
The disciplinary committee ruled that the GFF failed to provide sufficient evidence of the respective players’ participation in the tournament and as such, the respective players sentence was converted to time served.
Similarly, several coaches and match officials have also been slapped with provisional suspensions.
The match officials suspended are Dwayne Johnson, Deon Feasall and Roydon Ramsay, while the coaches are Dwayne Jacobs, Philbert Moffatt, Sharon Abrams and Sherwin Neblett. The GFF did not disclose if the disciplinary committee has conducted meetings with those officials.
“These are unfortunate things that are just part of the business of running football. I think in my earlier remarks, you would have heard me speak about the rigorous COVID-19 testing that we were mandated to do to keep the camp running. But not just doing that we had a lot of information sessions with the staff and the players. And we provided clear guidelines as to what we expected of them in terms of their behavior and their movement. Because we all know it impossible to create a bio bubble as they call it, we don’t have the facilities in Guyana to do that.
“I see folks putting up arguments that the kids need some money. That argument can be used for somebody picking up a gun and trying to commit a robbery. Everyone has a situation but we have to be responsible when we’re involved in something as massive as preparing for a FIFA World Cup qualifier. The Guyana Football Federation cannot answer all the challenges that are out there. We cannot, at least not in the short term, the things that we can do, we are trying to do it to the best of our abilities. And those that we are unable to do will take care of themselves sometime in the future.”
