BASSETERRE, St. Kitts-THE sporting year of 2009 was one that saw many hard fought battles on the field of play, but these were sometimes overshadowed for the bitter ones that took place off.
Sports administrations within the Federation and wider Caribbean struggled at times to have a unified vision that would better their sports and athletes. While some within the sports world found their futures and careers in a death spiral like cricket financer Allen Stanford, others such as the Federation’s 4x100m female relay team made long strides toward a prosperous 2010.
From S. L. Horsford’s St. Pauls United FC securing the inaugural Super League Championship trophy to the West Indies’ top players boycott of international cricket, SKNVibes presents the highest and lowest points of the 2009 sports year:
Football:
Football in St. Kitts-Nevis began the year in severe disarray as the dispute over the executive leadership of the St. Kitts-Nevis Football Association (SKNFA) continued. After spending six months encouraging FIFA to look into the operations of the R. A. Peter Jenkins administration, leader of the disputing member clubs Ian ‘Patches’ Liburd decided to relinquish his position at the end of January out of frustration. Shortly after, the then President of the TDC Newtown United FC, Anthony Johnson, took over as the SKNFA presidential candidate for the disputing member clubs.
After much campaigning by both Johnson and Jenkins’ administrations to the SKNFA member clubs, executive elections where to be held for the second time on March 1. While the Newtown, St. Pauls, Village and Garden teams had all been previously banned from the SKNFA by the Jenkins administration, a surprise move on the eve of the elections saw 10 more clubs being banned in an apparent attempt to prevent them from voting. The move was not met favourably by FIFA observers or the banned member clubs and the Johnson administration was successfully elected into office by a 17-14 margin, thus ending a nine month impasse that brought football to its knees in St. Kitts-Nevis.
Jenkins’ presence in football did not end in March, however. He would go on to lead an unsuccessful bid in June for a seat on the CONCACAF executive that ended in him being banned from CFU and CONCACAF administration by Austin ‘Jack’ Warner. The two nations that backed Jenkins’ campaign, Antigua & Barbuda and Grenada, were also threatened by Warner with disciplinary action at the time. Some sports commentators labeled Warner as tyrannical for the backlash against Jenkins and his supporters, while others felt that the Kittitian candidate had indeed crossed the standard operating protocol of the CFU by bringing an air of conflict before the CONCACAF body.
Though the SKNFA was reportedly in debt by nearly half a million dollars, the period following the March elections saw football making a rapid recovery from its 2008 low in popularity. The successful hosting of the Digicel Super League and the Chippie Fave 5 Five-a-Side football tournaments brought many of the Federation’s fans back to Warner Park to support their favorite teams.
S. L. Horsford’s St. Pauls United FC eventually won the Digicel Super League in supreme undefeated fashion, while Coury Gatorade Conaree FC took home EC $15,000 in cash after upsetting many favoured teams to win the Five-a-Side tournament.
In the SKNFA First Division, Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College FC made a memorable first impression on the football community by defeating Newtown Juniors FC 2-1 in the August finals and being promoted to the Premier Division for the second season of existence.
On the national level, the Federation’s teams fared well in 2009. The men’s senior national team lost by only one goal in their encounters against Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica, and defeated St. Vincent & the Grenadines in September, while the female U-20 team not only won its first game ever, but also its first tournament as they swept the CFU qualification round in Suriname.
Though the U-20 team did not advance beyond the next round to reach the CONCACAF qualifier for the World Cup, having faced teams such as Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Cuba, winning their first qualification round served as great justification for the many years of hard work put in by female football stalwart Elvis ‘Star’ Browne.
Several individual players made their presence in the international community known throughout the year as well, including teenagers Malivai Harris and Kieron Phillip, who participated in English trials, and former Rams Village Superstar Jevon Francis, who received the chance to play football in Malaysia.
Though the first quarter was filled great difficulty for the Federation’s football, continued hard work by the players and the SKNFA pulled the sport from the depths of its recession in 2009 with promises of new heights in 2010.
Cricket:
Whereas football suffered from great strife at the local level in 2009, cricket controversy in the West Indies was the talk of the regional and international community thanks to a wide-spread players strike and the imprisonment of billionaire Twenty20 financier Allen Stanford.
The year started off well enough for the West Indies senior team as they defeated England 1-0 in a home Test series in February. Captain Chris Gayle described the victory as a “turning point” for his team. Unfortunately, that declaration could not have been further from the truth and it was during that same Test series that reports first began to surface of Stanford being investigated by the United States Securities and Exchanges Commission for fraud totaling in excess of US $8 billion.
Troubles following the home series against England included the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua being banned from international matches by the ICC for 12 months (Mar. 12), many West Indies players boycotting the regional 4-Day competition over contracts and owed monies (Mar. 20), West Indies Cricket Board CEO Donald Peters resigning for “personal reasons” (Apr. 30) and the senior cricket team being lashed 2-0 in their away Test series against England in May.
By July negotiations between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association had fully disintegrated and top players like Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul announced they would be boycotting an upcoming series against Bangladesh.
The months that followed saw an inexperienced squad led by Floyd Reifer suffer a long series of defeats against Bangladesh in the West Indies and at the ICC Champions Trophy while negotiations between the WIPA and WICB reached an all-time low under the mediation of former Commonwealth Secretary General Sir Shridath Ramphal. The issue seemed to be on the brink of arbitration as a last resort.
By mid-October, increasing pressure from the ICC and the task of the upcoming away series against Australia was eventually the catalyst for resolution between the WICB and WIPA, though it was greeted by the cricket lovers of the Caribbean with the usual skepticism.
Questions were raised if the same politics were still in place when the selectors named the team to tour Australia and returned many of the top name players who boycotted playing for the WICB in the first place, particularly since several players from Trinidad & Tobago had shown their tenacity only weeks prior by taking second place in the ICC World Twenty20 Champions League.
The gamble to reinstate the players who had originally boycotted the WICB paid off in Australia, where the team recovered from a rusty performance in the first Test to draw the second and narrowly lose the third by 35 runs. Gayle also showed his returned fervor as captain by hitting a 70 ball century in the second Test, the fifth fastest by ball count in history.
Despite the good effort in Australia, relations between the WICB and the WIPA remain tenuous, as evidenced by a late December row over the format of regional competitions of 2010. Whether or not the West Indies would be able to become a unified cricketing force on par with the best teams in the ICC will once again be a major question through the new year.
Boxing:
In the Caribbean, the sport of boxing was sent into a grave state of mourning in January when two icons of the sport passed away suddenly.
The first loss came in the shocking death of Trinidadian Giselle Salandy, who was killed when the car she was driving lost control and collided head-on with a concrete highway pylon. Salandy’s career was easily the most illustrious of any female Caribbean boxer if not the entire world, having held the WBA, WBC, NABC, WBE, IWBF and WIBA Junior Light Middleweight World Titles. Following her death, Salandy received the Lifetime Achievement and Eternal Championship Awards from the WBC, as well as her nation’s highest honour, the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and a state funeral.
The second blow to the boxing community was José ‘Cheguí’ Torres of Puerto Rico, who died at the age of 75 in his home country. Torres was the former light heavyweight champion of the world during his prime, as well as an Olympic silver medalist. In Puerto Rico, he was an icon that inspired a generation of fighters and a proud tradition of Caribbean world champions that still exists today.
On the local scene, boxing made little progress in 2009 and no significant competitions were held within the Federation. Fighters were not completely forgotten, however, as Reuben ‘Fighting Hunks’ Percival was announced as a special award recipient by the Willful Skillful Hall of Fame, which is scheduled to take place next year.
Internationally, the boxing year of 2009 was dominated by only one man, welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao. The Philippines-born Pac Man had his first fight of the year on May 2 against the UK’s Ricky ‘The Hit Man’ Hatton and Pacquiao wasted no time proving his dominance against the bigger fighter, blasting Hatton with a left hook in the final seconds of the second round to win by knockout.
Pacquiao then went on to decisively defeat Puerto Rico’s Miguel Cotto for the WBO welterweight title in November by a 12th round technical knockout. Talks began to immediately circulate about a potential Pacquiao versus Floyd Mayweather Jr. super fight for 2010, but agreement on terms for such a fight proved very problematic throughout December.
(Part 2 of the SKNVibes sports year in review will be published on January 1 and will look back on the 2009 sporting seasons of track and field, basketball, netball and many other sporting disciplines that made headlines throughout the year.)
