We understand the difficulty of maintaining such a struggle, especially when the matter is so apparently clear-cut and straightforward. But the president of the University of Technology (UTech) has been around long enough, has achieved enough, and is sufficiently accomplished to be aware that governments, sadly, are often not logical in their calculations.

This is another case in point - the Golding administration's rejection last week of the UTech's request that the Trelawny Multi-purpose Stadium be transferred to it.

The Trelawny facility, a sprawling bit of real estate, was built with a US$30-million loan from Beijing and mostly Chinese labour for the 2007 Cricket World Cup, of which Jamaica was one of the Caribbean hosts.

Trelawny hosted the opening ceremony and a few warm-up matches. Since then, a handful of international soccer matches and other sports have been played at the stadium, but it remains a mostly underutilised facility in danger of becoming run-down. The expectation that it would be in demand by professional sports teams, mainly from the United States, for out-of-season training, has not materialised.

Perhaps it is that we have not been good at marketing the facility, although we doubt that it is the major issue. It faces competition and the Trelawny complex does not have the range of facilities that these teams demand. In the meantime, especially with a severe economic crunch, the Government is finding it difficult to pay for the stadium's upkeep.

sporting capabilities

It is against that backdrop that the UTech proposed that the Trelawny complex could become the core of its planned western campus without removing the facility's sporting capabilities. Rather, these would be enhanced.

For the UTech's St Andrew campus is the home of the MPV Track and Field Club, of which several of Jamaican champion athletes are members under the guidance of one of the world's best coaches, Stephen Francis. Moreover, the UTech also used to host the IAAF's regional High Performance Training Centre, to which a number of international athletes came for training stints.

The stadium would have enhanced the UTech's ability to leverage these connections. We suspect that the Government's dithering over the UTech's application contributed to the IAAF's decision to transfer its centre from the UTech to the older, and more developed, Mona campus of the University of the West Indies.

hopes

The Youth and Sports Minister, Olivia 'Babsy' Grange, has not given, at least not publicly, a clear reason for rejecting the UTech's proposal, although she did leave the door ajar, saying it had not been approved in its current form. What is not clear is what next the Government would expect from the UTech.

Ms Grange, however, seems to harbour old hopes of enticing professional sporting teams and maintains what, up to now, remains an ephemeral notion of its use in "sports tourism". She is conducting, she says, some kind of feasibility study on the facility.

What we are yet to appreciate is how the UTech's ideas and Ms Grange's notional plans are mutually exclusive. The university said it would do much of what Ms Grange would like to do. But more, it would also use the facility to offer university education to young Jamaicans. Now, what would you prefer?