 Thank you so much for staying with us here on the Sports Max Zone. The Guyana Football Federation is seeking to move the sport to a new level in the country. It recently launched the KFC Elite League, which is their premier club competition. On Good Friday, Sports Max will televise a mini-documentary called Guyana's Goal, which looks at the role the administration is playing in trying to develop football in the Caribbean nation. Our award-winning producer, Donald Oliver, was in Guyana to speak with the various stakeholders, including Guyana's football boss, President of the GFF, Wayne Ford, who is in his third and final term in office. Back in 2015, when I ran for the office of President of the Guyana Football Federation, we were now emerging out of a normalisation committee, which came about because of political turbulence within the football space in Guyana. That had been an unfortunate situation that Guyana at the time had endured for many, many years, in fighting within the key stakeholders of the sport. I came out of the belly of a club, so for many years, I was like every other citizen and fan on the outside looking in and reading not-so-pleasant news of what would have taken place at congresses, at other meetings, and just feeling very bad for the way in which the sport was being portrayed in the media. So as part of the normalisation committee that was installed by FIFA's mandate, they were required to stage elections, and quite possibly it may have been the only time in Guyana's football history, or maybe not the only time, but one of the few occasions that the elections were conducted transparently and fairly, with the full and complete oversight of both FIFA and Concercat. And I was elected on the 11th of November 2015, and here I am. For me, the most important goal was to tidy up the image of the sport, to bring about an atmosphere of accountability, transparency, to bring about stability, because I believe many of the goals that we are now achieving were difficult for previous administration, because of the excessive infighting and political instability. If a leadership of football is directing a lot of its time and resources outing fires, making peace among the members, then you're robbing initiatives, programs from the time and attention and resources that it truly deserves. So that was the first priority of my administration, and I believe we've delivered tremendously on that. Football is quite possibly the only sport, or maybe among a few, that you can go online right now on our Facebook page and see all of our audited financial reports from 2015 on to now, accompanied by our annual reports, which catalog exactly what the organization has been doing for those years. We have more compliance from our members in terms of trying to organize their operations within the confines of our statutes, and I believe we have a much more improved governance structure than we had eight years ago. Outside of that youth development was also a key initiative. Back in 2017 we launched our first nationwide academy training center program, where for the first time we had 18 paid technical officers working across the nine regional associations of Guyana. As you may already know, Guyana is a vast geographical space, and it's difficult for us to really implement a common program across 83,000 square miles, but the new structure that we instituted back in 2017 were the initial steps that we have taken to do this. The program has grown. We have seen the fruits of it. We have young players like Omari Glasgow that's now playing in the first team of Chicago Fire that came right through that program. We're seeing other players breaking into other leagues, but it's nowhere close to where I would like to see it. So we continue to invest in youth football development. Where would you want to see football go under your stewardship? Because if you have big audacious plans, more than likely you wouldn't be able to see it through the very end. So at the end of your stewardship, which you said would be at the end of this third term, where would you want football in Guyana to be? One of the greatest challenges that the sport is being confronted with at this moment, and for many years, for a matter of fact, is infrastructure. We have a significant lack of proper football infrastructure across Guyana. Like most of the Caribbean region we came out of the legacy of plantation and sugar bean, the main commodity that directed everything in the years gone by. So a lot of the sporting facilities that exist in Guyana were originally cricket pitches. And you know for many, many years, most of the international games that Caribbean countries were playing, they were playing on cricket stadiums. With the advent of the FIFA Forward Program, that our visionary and board leader in President Gianni Infantino launched back in 2016, we're now seeing more investment being directed towards infrastructure. In our contract of agreed objectives with FIFA, we have been approved for four artificial mini pitches, regulation sized pitches across the 83,000 square miles of Guyana. We've identified two venues that we will start with the first two and we're looking for an additional two venues to put the other two. So infrastructure is a key focus of my administration over the next couple of years, as we wind down on our tenure here as the leadership in Guyana's football. Talk to me a little bit about Durban and the vision there as to what exactly it will be by its completion. So Durban Park is being engineered and designed to be the center for the pro league that we wish to launch in about two years. The venue for international games that the Golden Jaguars and the Lady Jags will play. It also will feature in the design a stretch of mini pitches along the Hatfield Street corridor of the venue that would allow us to have ongoing grassroots and community football activities 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So apart from having a 10,400 seating capacity mini stadium that we'll be doing international engagements at, we will still be able to have that community engagement. So the project doesn't only benefit the key football stakers, namely the Federation, the players, corporate sponsors, but it also impacts positively and benefits the community. So we're very keen on pushing that. I think we're going to see construction activities starting by the middle to the end of the third quarter of this year. President, Wayne Ford and Lance, one of the things that really stood out for me from that sneak peek into what we'll be seeing tomorrow is the fact that he's very focused on infrastructure and he feels as if that has been one of the reasons that Guyana's football has not been moving at the pace that he wants it to. And his aim is to of course improve that, have more infrastructure for the players to be able to train and improve their craft. Yeah, a good look there. I'm looking forward to the next segment when he continues his discussion with Donald Oliver because one of the significant things to is that as you heard him say, he has come, he has been presiding in a post-normalization period. Of course, we know Trinidad and Tobago is about to go into their post-normalization period next month after the elections are held there for the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation. But a good look for Guyana's football at the moment. I know Wayne Ford has a good solid relationship with the president of FIFA Gianni Infantino who has endorsed him. And I think that is part of the stability of Guyana's football at the moment. But of course, we are anxious to hear more when we come back from the break. And he continues his chat with Donald. Yeah, break time.