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Sports administrator Courtney Pryce is bemoaning the absence of suitable sports and recreational facilities in Georges Plain, Westmoreland.

“Low Ground is large enough to accommodate an eight-lane 400m track, a football field and a multipurpose court, but it is not being manicured often enough and when it is done, that funding comes from the pockets of a few of us as community members,” Pryce told the WESTERN STAR.

“We need to get a netball court there, but we have no help,” Pryce said. “When the girls need to play netball, I have to resort to drawing a court beside a bar near the roadside in the community or draw on grass on some open lot.

“What happens now is that anywhere, like a church yard, where the grass is cut, is where the community children are now forced to play; and when the school’s (Georges Plain Primary and Infant) play area is cut they go there to play, too,” Pryce continued.

He said the area needs a community centre where the young men and women can properly engage in a variety of sporting disciplines, and that it is evident in the corner leagues, as the youth are responding positively.

“This centre would serve as a place that we can properly interact with the community as there has been an increase in shootings, killings and all sorts of crimes, so we are looking at using sports to move the people away from that type of negativity,” Pryce said.

Windel Tulloch, manager of the Georges Plain Football Club, agrees that a community centre is needed in the area and that the field at Low Ground needs proper maintenance

“We train at the Low Ground field. It not the best. When it is too bad, we ask members from the management team to cut it, or we use the field by the school. It is not quite the right fit for football in it present state,” Tulloch said,

“Right now, we are now trying to develop the under-13 programme to prepare players who will filter into the Georges Plain FC, as the community is full of talent,” he added.

Cane farmer Gary Kongal told the WESTERN STAR that if the business people in the community and the wider parish of Westmoreland invest in the development of the people of Georges Plain and its infrastructures, life can be much better for all.

“For Georges Plain to grown as a community, more support will need to come from the corporate [sector] Westmoreland, where the business community in Savanna-la-Mar and Grange Hill, in particular, will need to hold our hands as community members and invest some of their profit into the community,” he said.