More community involvement is needed to help tackle violence and antisocial behaviour on the island, according to several of Bermuda’s sporting club presidents.

Speaking at the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc Leadership Symposium, Somerset Cricket Club president Alfred Maybury stressed that the problems faced by the clubs reflect what is happening in the community at large and the clubs cannot be expected to fix them alone.

“The community needs to get more involved with being a part of the solution and not sitting back, looking at the club and saying ‘you people need to do something’,” Mr Maybury said.

“Too often we look at what happens at a club and 90 per cent of the time, the people who are involved are not members of that club but they are ones that come and create the problem.”

Pointing to several incidents at SCC this football season, which he said involved the same five individuals, Mr Mabury revealed they had now been banned from the grounds for 25 years. He also stressed that the individuals who are causing problems at the clubs island-wide are also a problem within the community as a whole. “So when the community decides that they are going to step up and not bury their heads in the sand, then we are going to have some solutions. The clubs can only do so much.”

Hundreds of people attended the panel discussion at CedarBridge Academy last night that focused on “evaluating the role of sports clubs in Bermuda”.

It aimed to act as a stepping stone for a community-derived solution to tackle violence associated with the island’s sporting clubs.

Panellists also included Neil Paynter, of St George’s Cricket Club, Jason Wade, of Southampton Rangers Sports Club, Ray Jones, from Devonshire Colts, Pembroke Hamilton Club’s Michael Trott, Shervin Dill, of North Village Community Club and Nadine Browne-Evans Henry, from Devonshire Recreation Club. They outlined some of the initiatives that the clubs, which service more than 1,000 youths between them, had undertaken to evolve with the times, help curb antisocial behaviour and safeguard members. And while they agreed that education was key, they also emphasised the need for more resources.

“There’s this myth out there where we are just clubs, we sell alcohol, people do drugs at our facilities and we encourage antisocial behaviour,” Mr Jones said.

He added that while clubs are working hard to keep up with the times, they need help because they are “not equipped to deal with some of the problems that these kids come with”.

“The rest of the community need to stop sitting on their bums and looking for other people to do it when they all need to join in because every club is being run by volunteers — they go to work in the mornings, do their full-time job and still find time in the afternoons and evenings to deal with your children.”