Coaches flock to Flow/ESPN clinic

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

Football coaches from all across western Jamaica turned out in their numbers for the second staging of the Flow/ESPN Football Clinic at the Trelawny Multi-purpose Stadium on Friday.

With the rising sun in the backdrop and into the less favourable midday heat, the 40 coaches could be seen being put through their paces by Jamaica's 1998 FIFA World Cup hero Robbie Earle; Trinidad and Tobago's World Cup goalkeeper Shaka Hislop; NFL free agent Verron Hayes - who are all on-screen ESPN personalities along with André Virtue, executive director, Whole Life Ministries, who played an integral part in helping to pull the event together.

This was the second time that the event was taking place in Jamaica, and for the first time featured the introduction of the I-Football technology - an Internet-based assessment tool which is used to identify a player's overall ability and pinpoint areas in need of improvement.

Bernard Stewart, general manager of ESPN Caribbean and Maritime Media, noted, through a release: "The football clinics are one of the ways in which ESPN is giving back to communities across the Caribbean."

ESPN International's director of business operation and development, Totlyn Mason, a Jamaican by birth, was excited about the project.

"I am thrilled to be back here a second time," said Mason during Friday's launch of the event at the venue. "The energy of this particular initiative, the fact that it had to be not just a one-off, but something that happen consistently and continually and got better while being useful to everyone and making a difference, makes me really happy that we are here today."

significant development

Hislop was thrilled to be back in the island and believes the programme has made significant development over last year's staging, and will help to improve the standard of coaching in western Jamaican.

"We have a better turnout than we did last year. We have also added another layer with I-Football being on board, and what that allows is all the things that we have laid out here with the coaches, they will be able to take on to their respective clubs and monitor their players. They will also be able to interact with the players and coaches and discuss whatever concerns they may have, and so we continue to build so that what we do here we hope that it will have a lasting effect over the next year," said the former West Ham and Newcastle player.

Earle, who played professionally at Port Vale and Wimbledon, was also proud of the programme's impact and believes it has the possibility of becoming an islandwide contributor to the development of football at the most crucial levels.

"It's an important step forward. I think we wanted to make a commitment to the kids and the region that this wasn't a one-off. Hopefully, things can grow from here, and this is really a platform where we can take this thing across the island and start to have an impact on grass-roots football all over," Earle noted.

The clinic continued yesterday with the involvement of more than 100 young male and female footballers between the ages of 12 and 15 from the region.