Audley Boyd, Assistant Sport Editor

WESTERN BUREAU:

NEWLY-ELECTED St. James Football Association (StJFA) president Orville Powell has begun "serious work", seeking to raise the level of the parish's football to its once dizzying heights.

Powell scored a landslide victory, earning 52 of the 90 available ballots, to dethrone former FA boss Lennox Wallace, who polled 20, at the association's annual general meeting on Monday night at the Montego Bay Cricket Club.

The third candidate, Thomas Sawyers, got 10 votes. Eight ballots were spoilt.

The other members of his executive are Junior Welch, first vice-president; former General Secretary David Watt, now the second vice-president; former board co-op member Bruce Gaynor; assistant secretary Pastor Hugh Solomon; and Rohan White, who retained his post as treasurer.

The five co-op members are Lilli-Mae Crawford, Tracy Reid, Anthony 'Follies' Williams, along with newcomers Donald Martin and Joshua Cummins.

Powell immediately went to work on the parish's football business the morning following the elections, saying urgent attention was required to correct fallen standards.

"I have some serious work to do right now," he told The Gleaner. "The people spoke, they wanted a change, and right now, starting today, we have some serious work to be done.

"I'm not sure of the state of the FA right now so I'm going through to see where we are and what needs to be done," he said.

An executive of big club Seba United, the last team from western Jamaica to win the Wray and Nephew National Premier League (NPL), Powell says his administration is here to serve everyone's cause.

"Everybody won't be on your side but I'm here to work for all of them, the ones who voted for me and the ones who didn't. There's so much to be done," he said.

With an election due for the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) presidency next year, each FA election has taken on added significance. However, Powell says his board's efforts now rest squarely on St. James' football.

Improvement

'It's St. James' football that we're dealing with now. We'll be concentrating all our efforts on rebuilding football in the parish next year. When the time comes for that (JFF elections), then we will deal with that."

The new FA boss, whose body campaigned under the slogan 'Team Recovery', reiterated that the restoration of the parish's football by improving the way administrative functions were carried out was a prime goal.

"We need to redefine our product, which is St. James' football, to put it back where it belongs," he said.

"One of the areas that we're really concerned about is PR (public relations), the information getting out to the media and we just hope that the media will stick with us.

"We've people putting money into football and we need to give them some mileage because if they don't get the mileage, then they will stop.

"We want to change the whole image of St. James' football and make it more visible," he remarked. "We want to restore St. James football to what it was, we want to get back the people involved in the game, we want to get back the parish football into Jarrett Park."