GFF unveils new dormitory, gym at NTC

National team encampments in the football fraternity just got a whole lot better as the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) on Wednesday unveiled two new facilities that will aid the country’s ballers.
At their National Training Center (NTC) on the East Bank of Demerara, a new dormitory was shown off to media operatives, marking a $9.9M investment by the Federation.
There, GFF President Wayne Forde divulged that the dorms will fulfil their goals of increasing players’ contact times.
“Apart from the fact that our players deserve to be in the best possible environment when we are preparing to represent Guyana, we also want to improve and increase the amount of time players are spending with our coaches. The contact time between players and coaches is very important to their development, and if we have good facilities where the boys and girls can enjoy and look forward to coming out here and spending weekends and weeks at a time during their preparation processes, then that will certainly bode well for the contact goals that we’ve set ourselves,” Forde related to several sport journalists on Wednesday.
In addition to the dorms, a separate self-contained room was also created, for which Forde explained the purpose.

The GFF President clarified, “That room is dedicated for a parent who, once a youth national team comes into camp, we will interview the parent, of course do our due diligence and background, and we will identify a parent who is willing to come and spend some time. Of course, we will compensate them for that time and be a second pair of eyes for the GFF.”
“We want to ensure that when these boys and girls are here, they’re treated fairly, they’re safe, and if there are any challenges on the ground that the staff is unable to resolve, maybe the parent can bring those challenges to our attention directly and we can resolve it.”
Further, a new state-of-the-art gym was also opened on Wednesday, carrying equipment geared at improving strength and conditioning. The cost for that facility amounted to some $12.3M.
“This is part of our ongoing investment in raising the standard of our programmes, doing everything we can to give our players the chance to discover their full potential. We obviously have good programmes in place already, but we have to continue to build on those programmes,” Forde shared.
On the other hand, GFF Technical Director Bryan Joseph said about the new acquisition, “I think this is another step in the right direction. It’s part of the transformation that we’ve been going through with all our national teams. We have, over the past couple of years, improved our performances at all the youth national levels, but this component was always missing, not just for football. So, this gym gives us the opportunity to design and implement programmes to help with the strength and conditioning of our players. This aids in improving the high-performance environment that we want to create at the NTC.”
The GFF boss also took the time to note that the Federation would be happy to open the doors of their new facilities to other sporting disciplines.

Forde divulged, “I should mention that we will also be happy to accommodate our sister disciplines who might be doing their own encampment and might want to utilise these facilities. Of course, there might be a small cost associated with it, but we’ll be happy to accommodate them because we do know the costs that go into housing and preparing national teams. So, if there’s anything we can do to help our sister associations, we’ll be happy to do that.”
The Federation further divulged that parts of the US$190,000 bill went towards items for new offices, as their technical department will now shift from the Campbellville Secretariat to the NTC.
“It makes all the sense in the world; here is where the coaches will be, where all the programmes will be run, so we want to bring the technical team closer to the action,” Forde said about the development.