The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

GARRY Markham, who served for some time as the athletic director for the Queen’s College Comets, has been appointed as the new technical director of the national development programme in the Bahamas Football Association (BFA).

Markham has replaced Kevin McGreskin, the Irishman who was appointed to the job in February 2015 but resigned last month after a year of turmoil in which the BFA experienced an ongoing dispute with some of its clubs who broke away to form their own organisation.

Markham, who had left Queen’s College, stepped in and has already completed his first full week in office.

“Like any other position, it’s short term until he goes through his probationary period,” BFA secretary general Fred Lunn told The Tribune. “He is now our new technical director with responsibility for our youth development programme. He’s not a coach and we have accepted that. He will set up our Centre of Excellence, which is where we will work with our players for the national team. So he will be working with our coaches to get them through a better level of coaching and that might entitle bringing in some foreign coaches. That’s his main responsibility over the next few weeks.”

Markham, who coached the Comets to victory in the Bahamas Association of Independent Secondary Schools Track and Field championships in 2015, was not available for comment up to press time last night.

Lunn said Markham is serving on a six-month contract and the BFA will re-evaluate his progress in three months and once he meets expectations, his tenure will be extended.

Markham, who has Bahamian citizenship after being here for more than 20 years, becomes only the second Bahamian to fill the position, following Trevor Rolle, who served from 2013 to 2015 prior to the hiring of McGreskin, a UEFA A licenced qualified coach with the English, Irish and Welsh Football Associations.

“Garry is a local naturalised Bahamian, so it’s good to have him on board,” Lunn said. “It makes life so much easier because we have a face, which is familiar with Bahamians and the way that we get things done. He’s been in the system, especially the school system, for a very long time, so that is a plus for us. So we expect that he will have a big presence in the grassroots system, which will be a help for our association in getting more players involved in the sport.”

While they are not living in a vacuum, Lunn admitted that they will be seeking more international expertise in the future, but Markham was available and he met the criteria that the BFA was looking for and so they gave him the opportunity to prove himself just like anybody they would have brought in from overseas.

McGreskin resigned as technical director on February 1 with immediate effect, citing a lack of support for the national player development programme, coach education and other proposed programmes to develop the game in the Bahamas.

In his resignation letter McGreskin appealed to the BFA, in order to realise the potential to get players involved and to maximise their potential, to give the next technical director “the support and authority he/she requires to implement the programmes necessary to achieve this”.

McGreskin was the most qualified person ever to work with the BFA, holding his UEFA A Licence in three national associations, including the English FA, Welsh FA and Irish FA and being a regular speaker at many UEFA events.

He is now the technical director of Burlington Youth Soccer Club in Toronto, Canada.