A change in leadership appears imminent at Southampton Rangers Sports Club with many of the organisation’s existing executive expected to resign their positions by the end of the current term.
Among those expected not to seek re-election at September’s Annual General Meeting are president Chanjiv Simons and vice-president Jason Wade.
Popular sports commentator Darren Burchall, a former cricket and football star, who is now the cricket coach at the South Shore institution coach is understood to be mounting a bid for the lead executive post.
Burchall is also a former president of Boulevard Community Club, as well as a former vice-president and acting secretary of Southampton Rangers.
He has in the past credited club management for having negotiated the institution through the Covid pandemic, which crippled — often irreparably — many businesses.
“There are many multi-billion dollar conglomerates that have crashed in the past three years and several businesses have gone under,” said Burchall of the club’s ability to survive the Covid pandemic. “People have lost their homes and the people operating the club, to their credit, have kept the club afloat.”
Nevertheless, the aspiring leader aims to have the club do more than merely survive, but thrive and regain greater respect in the community as a place where youth and adults can develop and fellowship in relative safety.
He also wants to restore Rangers’s cricket and football teams as viable contenders among the upper echelon of the Island’s main sports.
Burchall revealed a six-point plan he hopes to install if elected.
“I have an action plan drawn up with the vision going forward,” said Burchall. “It includes establishing the club as our community’s service and action hub; developing innovative streams of revenue; investigating the possibility of purchasing the playing field; constructing a multipurpose indoor sports excellence facility on the property; developing and supporting multiple women’s sports teams; upgrading the current physical plant and fortifying the building’s infrastructure; and initiating the Southampton Education, Training and Development Centre.”
While admitting such goals to be quite lofty, he believed such could be achieved through combined efforts and a determined community effort drawn from all sectors- public and private.
Added Burchall: “At first glance, people will say, ‘Oh you can’t do that.’ But I am a strategic planner who believes that it takes teams of teams to make organizations successful.”
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