MONROVIA, Montserrado – The month of December has come and is gradually going away with Liberians still not seeing the start of their favorite local sports event.

Diehard Liberian football fans do not only use the month to celebrate the festive season; they also participate in Liberia’s most attention-grabbing sports competition, the National County Sports Meet.

The tournament, which is played among the 15 counties, usually kicks off in early December and ends the first week in January to allow players to return to their respective clubs for the new football season.

However, although this year’s tournament was slated to kick off on December 2 in Bong, it has been postponed twice – first to Dec. 9 and then to Dec. 16. As the latest date has passed without any action, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the chief organizer of the tournament, has announced another date.

In a phone conversation with The Bush Chicken, assistant youth and sports minister Henry B. Yonton said the multiple postponements were due to multiple requests sent to the Ministry of Youth and Sports by the Superintendent Council via the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Yonton said the Superintendent Council had complained that the US$8,000 being given to each county as preparations fees were insufficient. They requested a total of US$30,000 each. In their second letter, the minister said the superintendents asked that the tournament is played after the runoff election to truly serve as a unifying force for citizens involved in a tense elections period.

“Holding everything constant, we are expecting [the County Meet to] start the 30^th of December and be played up to the 12^th of January,” Yonton added.

Yonton said that the ministry had not come up with a decision on whether to provide more money to the counties for the tournament because the Youth and Sports Ministry was still in talks with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.

“We are very hopeful that it will happen at the soonest possible time,” Yonton said. “We are confident that the county meet will begin any time after the election.”

Featured photo by T. Kla Wesley Jr.