Boxhill pleads for corporate support
The News Review:
- Boxhill pleads for corporate support
- Downswell upbeat with Boyz’ performance
- They ran not to save their skins, but to live to try again
- Tehelka – The People’s Paper
Boxhill pleads for corporate support
Jamaica Observer – Jul 23, 2005
“I want to appeal to corporate Jamaica and the fans at large to come on board and support the programme and the players. As far as I am concerned, the commitment that these players showed, the sky is the limit to what we can achieve,” he said from the team’s Boston hotel last week. The Boyz, made up of all home-grown talent, qualified for the quarter-final of the Cup after a win, a draw and a loss to Guatemala (4-3), South Africa (3-3) and Mexico (0-1), respectively, in Group C, but went down 1-3 to the USA in the elimination round. Boxhill said when his administration announced its new direction of placing the emphasis on home-grown talent, the detractors cackled and gave the new-look Boyz little chance of achieving anything. They went on to win the inaugural Digicel Caribbean Cup and went 16 matches unbeaten until they were stopped by Mexico. “When we embarked on this new route, it was not something that was readily accepted by the public at large, but we knew what we had in mind and what we wanted to achieve and stuck to it and it has paid dividends…
“The point I am trying to make is that money was not a factor and I really want to applaud the players,” he added. He also wanted to point out that not only were the players all home-grown, but so too were the members of the technical staff. “I want to also emphasis that all the players are home-grown talent, and the fact that they came here and did so well made us proud. Not only that, but the staff is also fully Jamaican and that goes to show that as Jamaicans we only need the opportunity,” he told Sporting World. In the past, Jamaica’s senior football team was made up of a number of British-born professionals and Brazilian coaches, but since the failed 2006 World Cup qualifying campaign, the JFF has shifted focus and has decided to invest in local talent. Talk Back No comments have been posted.
Downswell upbeat with Boyz’ performance
Jamaica Observer – Jul 23, 2005
The president of the Costa Rican Football Federation, a Mr Navarro, who watched the Boyz in their 0-1 defeat to Mexico in their final Group C game, said: “They are a very exciting team with good technical ability and I see them getting better down the road. The Boyz, given little chance by some journalists and members of the football fraternity, silenced their critics with their positive play and eventual qualification to the quarter-finals as one of two best third place finishers in the 12-team, three-group championship. Many cast doubt on Wendell Downswell’s ability to take his team of local-based and home-grown talent “to the next level”. “You will find that from time to time because it is a new administration with a new thrust, not many will buy into it plus there are those who think I don’t have the necessary qualities to bring the team to a different level, but what I do know is that I have all the confidence in myself, staff and players,” Downswell said from the team’s hotel in Boston last week, after the team bowed out of the Cup after losing 1-3 to bogey team, the USA. Downswell is urging corporate Jamaica and the wider society to throw their weight behind this team, claiming that with proper preparation the new-look Boyz could be “one of the superpowers in CONCACAF”. “I am taking this opportunity to appeal to corporate Jamaica that under adverse conditions we have made a statement. So with more corporate help I am sure that Jamaicans at home and abroad will be justly proud of this team,” noted the former Jamaican winger, who took the reigns following the dismissal of Carl Brown last year.
They ran not to save their skins, but to live to try again
Times Online – Jul 23, 2005
Now they had, the terrorists knew that they did not have long to make their move. They could not lie low until London dropped its guard as there were enough clues to their identities and addresses left in a couple of the rucksacks abandoned on a Tube train and the No 26 bus to lead police to them and their families. Just like the July 7 bombers, this group had carried documents and letters as they wanted the authorities to know this was another home-grown suicide team. This group appears to be from London.
Tehelka – The People’s Paper
Tehelka – Tehelka (subscription) – Jul 23, 2005
But it is in poor urban communities like this one that the radical Imams enjoy a degree of success with their sermons. The mcb accepts some youngsters for their simple bi-polar worldview, which pitches ‘true’ Islamic believers into a global battle against the Western infidel. “If these bombers are home-grown then very serious questions will have to asked about how on earth people who have grown-up in this country can hate it so much that they will attack their own people,” Bunglawala says. Community groups say that youths have been radicalised in recent years by the direction of the UK’s foreign policy. Prime Minister Tony Blair has rejected suggestions of a direct link between the Iraq war and last week’s attacks, but conceded that the causes of terror, including political issues in the Middle-East, must be addressed before terror can be defeated. Bunglawala says young Muslims who tried to prevent the war in Iraq by democratic avenues now feel deceived. Their alienation is compounded by the daily images of Muslim blood being spilt in the Middle-East.