The need for national sporting associations to use local experts to run courses locally was strongly echoed by the Executive Director of the Gambia National Olympic Committee, George Gomez.

According to Gomez, national associations should be in a position to use their own experts to run courses and not to go out and look for a foreign expert.

“We have the same knowledge and expertise with them and for a start, we would use our own people and then later we can have some body outside to help develop our administrators”.

George Gomez made these remarks during a three day administrative course organised by the Gambia Cricket Association which was run by the President of the Gambia Cricket Association, Johnny Gomez.

He said the Gambia Cricket Association is among the first to use its own personnel as resource person for a training programme.

“The Gambia Cricket Association should be commended for this initiative. We have people who are capable to train locally. And looking at what I have seen here today, even a foreign expert might not be able to do it. The Gambia Cricket Association should be lauded for this initiative and are worth emulating.”

“If you are elected to lead an association, you should have knowledge on the field and should be in a position to train and exchange ideas with members of the association and not to always rely on foreign experts,” he highlighted.

He stated that in the past, cricket, football, Rugby and Athletics used to be the most popular games but suddenly, cricket went dead pointing out the game now registering progress and hope that with the effort of the young people in it, the game will go back to its glory days.