Too much tribalism!

Bryan says infighting forced him to quit JCA

Leighton Levy, Gleaner Writer

Robert Bryan knew from as early as December last year that his days as CEO of the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) were rapidly coming to an end.

Bryan, who was appointed CEO on August 4 last year, replacing Diyal Fernando, who was hired four months earlier, resigned this week after only six months on the job.

Tournament director of successful ICC Twenty/20 World Cup held in the Caribbean last year, Bryan was tasked with, among other things, charting a new course forward for the JCA and the island's cricket that has been struggling to energise its fan base; and to raise much-needed revenue for the cash-strapped association.

But by December, four months after he took the job, Bryan said he came to realise that the situation at the JCA, which he described as being akin to tribal warfare, was one that he did not want to be part of.

Review the situation

"I think from as early as late last year I was beginning to feel like this didn't make a lot of sense. So having taken the holidays to kind of review the situation I communicated that to the president (JCA president Paul Campbell), but he was refusing, so we continued talking," Bryan said during an interview with The Gleaner yesterday.

He continued: "But looking at how things unfolded in the new year, the long delays, the elections, all of the events I just decided that well, you know."

The problems, he believes, stem from the last election two years ago when, instead of the sides moving past the period and working together, the operational environment is more like a government and opposition, which has been very detrimental to the organisation.

"You just got the feeling that no one was listening because there was just a focus on pursuing those things that they considered were important enough to unseat or gain ascendancy," he said.

"I remember going to a meeting with a very extensive report on the finances of the association and somehow some members of the board managed to focus on an absolutely peripheral issue, to the point of breaking the meeting to focus on this issue that had no bearing on the finances, and ended up not paying any attention to the report with respect to the cash flow and the financial position," Bryan lamented.

"I found that extraordinary and they even managed to call an emergency board meeting to discuss this peripheral issue. From then, I got the view that these guys could never really be serious," he added.

Another sore point for Bryan was the constant leaking of information that comes up for discussion at the board level. It was a situation that made him very uncomfortable.

"After a while you are not even comfortable in expressing yourself, as you have no way of knowing if it was going to end up in the public domain because it may seem to be helping one side," he said.

Despite all the problems, Bryan said, some things were accomplished during his six-month tenure.

"The focus was to try and get the fundamental processes in order, and I think we were able to get the cash flow under some control and being able to plan, based on the cash flow, and manage that process," he says.

Watch The Full Interview Below