Football: When adults quarrel, kids suffer!

Last Monday, a worried parent from Springdale approached me for help because his kid in school could no longer participate in football competitions as the Cebu Football Association apparently sanctioned Springdale with a 3-year ban from playing football competitions. I immediately told my friend that this was stuff that our sportswriters write about and since I wasn’t really following up the local football events (however I never miss watching the World Cup) I thought that I’d let this one go.

But my friend had only one appeal, for me to look into the issue and ask myself that if adults have some kind of a disagreement, should this result in the children being punished? It was indeed a very valid and relevant question. Hence, I looked at the articles of our good friend, Nimrod Quinoñes, John Pages and the other articles in my back issues of the local papers and found out that there was indeed a problem that is worthy of being written outside the realm of sports columnists.

Since most of our sportswriters already said their piece on this issue, let me then go into the bottom of this problem. It stems from the polarization between the Cebu Football Association (CFA) and the Cebu Amateur Football Club (CAFC) whose officers once upon a time crisscrossed between these two organizations. But then, something went amiss, a personal problem that ended up with bad blood, and went from bad to worse.

That Springdale was slapped with a 3-year ban from playing by CFA Pres. Richard Montayre was caused by the CAFC’s playing in the Sinulog Cup, during the Sinulog weekend, which coincided with one game of the Aboitiz Cup, a CFA event. Mayor Mike Rama apparently wrote CFA to give way to the Sinulog Cup, but this was turned down. The reason? Because it is not the CFA hosting the Sinulog Cup. More bad blood?

Because the Aboitiz Cup was played simultaneously with the Sinulog Cup, when Springdale finished playing the Sinulog Cup, they proceeded to play the Aboitiz Cup, but were prevented to do so as they were considered 5 minutes late. This is the flimsiest of reasons. Filipinos are always late, but the parents swore that they were in the field with their opponents already!

Sore at that incident, Springdale then wrote CFA an explanation and withdrew for the rest of the season. On Jan. 31, CFA Tournament Director Eleazer Toledo wrote Springdale to acknowledge their withdrawal with a warning for the consequences of their action. Funny, on the same day, CFA Pres. Richard Montayre wrote Springdale to inform them of the 3-year sanction. Come now. Was this a board decision or the decision of Mr. Montayre?

As I dug deeper into why there was bad blood between CFA and CAFC, I learned that certain officials had some financial trouble with Mr. Montayre. Is it true that there is even an arrest warrant against this fellow? While this issue is still boiling hot, the children of Springdale are the ones who suffer from the problems of the adults. I suggest we drop the ugly politics and let the kids to play, more so that football is now gaining popularity thanks to the Azkals whose goalkeeper was a Springdale graduate.

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There is no doubt in my mind that Feb. 6 was a day that I wasn’t proud of Cebuanos because we only proved how gullible many of us are. We’ve seen enough of the video footages of the tsunami disasters that happened in Indonesia on Dec. 26, 2004 and last March 11 in Japan to know that tsunamis happen immediately after an earthquake occurs. If there was a tsunami last Monday right after the earthquake, it would have reached the shores of Western Cebu in less than five minutes, as the Tañon Strait is very narrow. Unlike what happened in Japan or Indonesia where the quake occurred hundreds of miles away from land.

But then I believe in that old adage, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.” What we need to do now is learn lessons from that every embarrassing incident and the number one on my list is education, education and more education. Remember that old saying, “Knowledge is power.” The mass of people we saw last Monday fleeing the downtown district was in reality a mass of ignorance. These people never even knew that the Fuente Osmeña circle is already on high ground.

Take a picture of the 10-meter high tsunami waves that struck Japan’s northeastern coast and super impose it here in Cebu, and you’ll realize those waves couldn’t have reached Fuente Osmeña. But the ignorant mass of people even went as high as Busay Hills and this includes the people in Mandaue and Consolacion. What we need to do is simply set up a similar group that looked for Japanese warships during World War II called Coast Watchers. Use the Bantay Dagat group if you will, but they should be tapped to give warnings of high sea level or an oncoming tsunami so our people can be given the proper warnings next time another tsunami alert is raised so the gullible won’t panic anymore.

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