Similarities between football and netball
IN MANY ways, there is a lot of similarity between football and netball in the country at the moment. For one, both sports are struggling to move to the next level. The Reggae Boyz continue to find the World Cup merely an elusive dream, while netball continues to find that they are getting no closer to breaking that stranglehold that New Zealand and Australia have over the world game. We finished with the bronze medal in the World Championship in 2007, and we were legitimately considered to be the third best in the world then. That status has gone and we are now seen to be behind England as well as the big two.
If we are honest, netball at the top level is really about four countries and so Jamaica dropping to fourth is like saying we are at the rear of the teams that matter. Our performance at the last World Championship was very discouraging, with the margin of defeats to the big two worse than it would have been in previous competitions. This is not much different from the Reggae Boyz slipping from being Caribbean kingpins to being virtually last at the last Caribbean Cup, when the football administration was pilloried by the public. Somehow, however, the netball administrators get an easier public ride.
Both sports are run by people with a lot in common. Whatever else can be said about them, both Marva Bernard and Captain Horace Burrell are hard workers, passionate about the job, and both have, in no small way, raised the profile of their respective sport. Both have presided over their sport at a time when the financing superseded what was there before. Both have been instrumental in getting a home and transportation for their respective national teams, for example, but both sports continue to say that, to get to the other level, then the level of financing must be dramatically improved. The stark difference, however, is in how they are both treated by the public. Marva Bernard faces her level of criticism from time to time, but she doesn’t get the same clamour for her head as does Captain Burrell when things don’t go according to plan. Think on this.
CRITICISM OF WHITMORE
When the Reggae Boyz were moving from one disastrous performance to another a few months ago, Theodore ‘ Tappa’ Whitmore came in for a lot of flack. The nation started questioning his coaching credentials, and whether being a brilliant national player, without any club coaching career to speak of, should have been enough to give him the job of running a national team. By extension, Burrell was slaughtered for the decision to hire him. Now, look at the similarity.
Oberon Pitterson- Nattie, like Tappa, was a big- time national player. Like Tappa, she was one of the best we have had in the modern era. Like Tappa, she had no real coaching résumé to speak of, and like Tappa, she was fasttracked from being star player to national senior coach. In Oberon’s case, she was given the Under- 16 national team to the Caribbean Cup a few years ago, but we lost there, the only time we would have ever lost at that level when we contested. So, in terms of a coaching résumé prior to national duties, neither was particularly impressive.
When the results were not coming, Whitmore was virtually pressured out of the top job, while Oberon, for the most part, escapes public persecution, despite the fact that the netball team just doesn’t seem to be improving, or certainly not at the rate the public would like. From time to time, there are those who will call for the impressive Winston Nevers to be given the reins as coach, but those calls are from select pockets of people and not the national ‘ Whitmore must go’ fervour that was so evident in the latter stages of our World Cup qualifying campaign.
‘ AUNTY MARVA’
Why the difference in how the public deals with both sports and, by extension, both sports bosses? Is it merely because football is a more popular sport than netball in Jamaica? Is it because football is more widely followed by men than netball, which has a proportionally larger female following, and men tend to be more naturally aggressive than women? Are those the reasons, or is it that Marva Bernard altogether cuts a more likeable personality than Captain Burrell? Marva comes across as a lovable, friendly aunt whom you don’t want to ever get upset because she might just start crying, while Burrell’s image as a brash, arrogant, wealthy ex- army captain makes him fair game for our wrath. If this is true, what does that tell us about us as a people? Think on these things.