BFL season postponed in controversy over field
Good evening I’m James Adderley and you’re tuned to this fresh dish of Sports Monday. In the headlines, the BFL stand off with the National Sports Council is taking centre stage. The Sports Council has ruled the no football matches are to be played at the MCC Ground until November eighteenth due to damage from Hurricane Keith and the Belize Football League is crying foul. So we are going to see what’s going happens and when the football season will resume. In the meantime we caught up with the personalities concerned.
Maito Perdomo, Commissioner, BFL
“On Thursday we got concerned about the field and we had a meeting scheduled with Ms. Cuellar for eight-thirty Thursday morning. Dr. Chimilio, Mr. Waight who is an executive member of the league and myself went there and waited for Ms. Cuellar for an hour. She didn’t show up until about nine-thirty and we inspected the field. Now I have been dealing with the MCC for at least the last twenty years and I know that this time of the year the MCC does get wet and it does get mucky, but we have always played football under those conditions. Every year we have first division, we have semi-pro, so the field is always used.”
James Adderley
“As part of the inspection team are you positive that what you saw would have made football matches playable?”
Maito Perdomo
“Definitely so. We got there and Mr. Waight and myself started moving because there was still the debris from the hurricane there, all the trees were cut up. Sports Council did fix the fence that was broken down, I commend them for that. So Mr. Waight called Mr. Marin from SEL. He said that he could cut the field, move the debris in about a day and a half and get it ready. That would mean that Friday afternoon they could mark the field for games that play Saturday night, the first game. We also called BEL and BEL confirmed to us that they would send a crew out there at one o’clock that afternoon to show them what was needed. Ms. Cuellar came in and we told here that the BFL was even willing to finance getting the MCC ready, but that we would talk about it and get it back for our taxes, the ten percent that the Council usually gets from every game. She said that she couldn’t do that, that she couldn’t go against what the board of directors of the Council that MCC wouldn’t be used. She went inside got on the phone to I think it was Mr. Hyde, I’m not sure and Dr. Chimilio spoke to him. When he came out after a long discussion inside the room where the telephone is, he came out and said that the Council has decided that we cannot use the field. At that point I told him well listen, I have to go back to my owners, I have to tell them what is happening, because the only other alternative out of this would be to reschedule the Belize City teams to play two weeks outside of Belize City.
James Adderley
“For the record you are saying in effect that certainly there has to be another motive to not allowing the BFL to play on the field. Is that the way you feel?”
Maito Perdomo
“Well I feel there was something else, some other reasoning that I have not been told yet.”
Louis Leslie, Owners Association of BFL
“We believe there are were ulterior motives as to why we could not use the MCC Grounds.”
James Adderley
“When you say ulterior motives, are you intimating that maybe the National Sports Council in an effort to punish the BNFA has made this decision?”
Louis Leslie
“That could be one of the motives, but what strikes me as funny why I would like to put that motive on the back burner is because we were offered the National Stadium to play and we all know the National Stadium is a mess, no football can play there. Who ever built that stadium didn’t know what they were doing. We also noticed that San Pedro, which was through the eye of Keith three times, was ready to play football. So it struck us as funny as to why the MCC wasn’t ready. So I discarded that, it can’t be that, it has to be something else. I’m saying that all footballers, the owners decided then and there that we were not going to let go of the MCC Grounds and that we were going to hold on for dear life.”
Meanwhile the director of the National Sports Council, Clara Cuellar had her unique take on what transpired.
Clara Cuellar, Director, National Sports Council
“Dr. Chimilio and I discussed the matter and discussed the matter. Again right here on this field and in their presence it was stated that the field was not ready for play, and playing on this field would destroy it. Please let us understand that we can play ball here because one can play ball in any field. But what we are looking at is they type of injuries the teams will suffer down the road if we cause a mud slide at this place and the type of damage to the field to repair it.”
James Adderley
“Just for argument sake, the BFL feels that it ball game can be played at San Pedro who had the eye of the hurricane three times, that means that the MCC is useable. Do you give any credence to that belief?”
Clara Cuellar
“Well first of all, that is a surprise to me because the San Pedro team as well as the San Pedro town board has submitted for over sixty thousand dollars for help with their sporting facilities because they have both said that their facility is not prepared officially.”
James Adderley
“But they are playing games out there.”
Clara Cuellar
“Officially to us. They are asking us to help them repair the field so that they can play. That they are playing games come back to what I am telling you, one can play games on any field. This field right now has five home teams. If we want to play in mud and slide–and remember that we have never agreed to close a season–this field is ready for play.”
James Adderley
“How soon will we have football at the MCC Grounds? That’s what the people out there want to know.”
Clara Cuellar
“Well, if the sun continues we should be ready for weekend. That was a commitment made then. The commitment was we are to meet on Tuesday evening here and then we would have decided whether we would have been up. Please understand, in the pipeline we have plans to renew the fence, the drawings and the estimate is all there, to cover the bleachers over there, and Keith comes along. This is a natural disaster, how come in the middle of all of this, and emotions running high, it’s going to be targeted in a certain direction. We need to stay objective and committed to what is better for football.”
James Adderley
“This new planted grass will not be a hindrance to the calendar of events here?”
Clara Cuellar
“No, we don’t’ believe so at all. One has to understand in planting of grass, we waiting for the best time to roll the grass and we to that just before play, we’ll have more people in here. We have had other experts make the decision on this field, I am not the one.”
Of course folks there are some inconsistencies when you compare the statements of the Sports Council and the BFL. Obviously they are not on the same page, but Louis Leslie certainly sounded a serious warning to Dr. Bertie Chimilio and the Belize National Football Association.
Louis Leslie
“The Sports Council apparently has information which I have had for the pass five years, in that the present executives of the BNFA are there illegally. I have been at very single general meeting that the BNFA has had for the past five years and at none of those meetings was the BNFA voted into office for four years. They should have held a general meeting already and I think the National Sports Council has some information concerning this. I have all the information, I have the minutes of those meetings.”
Finally folks, we just hope that the situation gets settled. We are all waiting for football play to resume. I nation demands it and of course we are going to keep you posted. We do think that football could return this weekend to the MCC Grounds.
