Dear Sir,

It really annoys me when I pick up a newspaper and see letters written by individuals who express themselves but are in my opinion, cowards for not signing their names upon its completion. This tells me that these are the same individuals who smile in your face, but then turn and stab you in the back while they are still smiling.

I am referring to the letter from ‘Piece of the Rock’ which I read on Saturday afternoon with great interest.

I am someone who is very analytical, but stays in the background and doesn’t get into many issues outside of his own space. What I am referring to is (in my opinion) the comments from ‘Piece of the Rock’ which temporarily annoyed me — but we must always take into consideration that everyone has an opinion and a right to express them.

The problem that I have in this country in relation to football is there are far too many so-called experts when it comes to the running of a club or team. How many of these individuals are affiliated with clubs or how many are doing anything to improve the standard of our game?

Yes, our game has declined over the years and yes, the BFA need to make a decision on the Technical Director and yes, I do not agree with some of our administrators within the association and yes, just because some coaches are not seen at local courses on a regular basis doesn’t mean that they are not increasing their knowledge in foreign environments. Just remember the tip of the iceberg and what is seen on the surface is visual, but what is not seen is more of a worry.

I have seen the tone of these letters before when I was the assistant to none other than Mr. Kenny Thompson of the Bermuda National Team a couple of seasons ago. It has now resurfaced with him coaching the Under-23 National Team. I never saw any letters written when any other individuals were at the helm of our team other than when Kenny was in charge any team.

This tells me that there are people who are there just waiting for negative results when Kenny is involved to feed their inflated egos.

Whether the Rock of Gibraltar have 23,000 people or not, what one has to take into account in Bermuda is that we have fallen so far behind other countries — who years ago we defeated on numerous occasions.

I had a conversation the other day and mentioned that as a member of the National Team in 1989 we defeated the USA 1-0 at PHC Stadium. Also we toured the Caribbean and defeated Trinidad 1-0 and drew 1-1 while also defeating Barbados, Mexico and Canada on other occasions.

The countries just mentioned have made steady progress over the years and, other than Barbados, have all competed on a World Cup Finals stage. But we have been in steady decline since the 1994 World Cup campaign.

The players and administrators of today must decide what they want out of the game and if it is to represent their country then there is a criterion that must be met and one of those is to be drug free.

This is a big issue that many people stay silent about, but has to be addressed sooner than later. The first thing that you hear when you go to a match at the National Sports Centre is “where is this player and that player”?

The sad thing is that there are so many of our players in Bermuda dependant on drugs and will not make the necessary sacrifices to represent their country in sports and that to me is very, very sad because they do not know what they are missing out on when one represents his/her country.

Do I have all the answers? Definitely not, but one thing that I will say is that in order to get our game back to where it can be, we must work together, stop the madness and back stabbing for the betterment football in this country.

Dennis L. Brown

Director of Football

Somerset Cricket Club