A few years ago the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) under the Captain Horace Burrell came to a decision that an intelligent way to advance football in Jamaica would be to start up a football academy. This would advance football by basically finding talent in our nation's youth and then building them up until they mature enough to be able to take part in the national football programme. In essence this makes sense for Jamaican football. We can see where there is definitely talent that exists in Jamaica but it isn't nurtured to the point where it can serve any purpose. Time and time again our national team seems to be able to make it to the big show but then fail at the most inopportune time.

All of this started after 1998 when Jamaica made it to the World Cup for the first time, and we realized that we could actually make it somewhere with this whole football thing. We were riding high on confidence for the 2002 world cup, when we basically failed in the most epic way available, and this repeated for the 2006 and then the most recent 2010 campaign, where more and more failure ensued. But this isnt what this post is actually about, this post is about the actual academy that they have been trying to start since 2003.

Well the first time the academy (as I stated) was announced in 2003 under the Burrell administration, this was supposed to be in Portmore, a location in the middle of one of the most heavily populated communities in Jamaica. This seemed to make sense, I mean there would be lots of kids around, lots of teenagers, essentially a large pool of talent on which to base Jamaica's footballing future. There was a large groundbreaking ceremony held and it was really heavily publicised and it seemed that Jamaica had a bright future ahead of us...

However this ended when Crenston Boxhill took over the reigns of the JFF and decided that he was going to scrap what the Captain had already started and he decided to move the football academy from Portmore to Malvern St. Elizabeth. This was met with questioning expressions from most Jamaicans as they thought about the obvious question of "why move the already being built academy to a rural area?". There was no clear answer given, however one can assume it would be the proximity to Western Jamaica and the pool of talent that existed there. So as before there was a groundbreaking ceremoney and more throwing around of political clout and what seemed to be a simple showing of who played football with the larger balls...

Well this ended when the Captain took back over the reigns of the JFF and scrapped the second iteration of the football academy and decided that he was going to start the academy back in Kingston but this time at the University of the West Indies Mona campus. Well yet again there was another groundbreaking ceremony and a timeline was passed and I am lead to wonder whats the point of this academy really? Is this really about football, or is it about throwing one's weight around? Its been 7 years since the original announcement, can you imagine the amount of talent that has fallen through the cracks since then?

Get serious guys, cut the crap

** Taken from the Jamaica Observer