The one month duration of the razzmatazz of the World Cup has come and gone and as I promised the readers, I now vent my spleen on the tournament with emphasis on the lessons to be learnt or learnt, writes sports critic Kebba Yorro Manneh.

First and foremost the euphoria good organization and above all the brilliant overall achievement of the episode must be thumbed up to the credit of the South Africans and to all those who lent a hand. On the nitty gritty of the tourney, I may not have the technical insight to decipher the pros and cons but thank God, our analysts over our own media houses on both the print and electronic really had a field day: whether it was well done or not, thanks to the enticing and lucrative sponsorship package by our GSM institutions, they have been occupying the airwaves thus I presume a good job is being done in that domain.

What lessons have we learnt as Gambians to better our own? The response to this inquest must be the prerogative of the many panelists to come together to sum up the pros and cons of the tourney in at least a one day forum or good write up to the effect. Can they rise up the challenge? Yes, they can and they must at least give some of the crumbs of their earnings to the populace as a way of engaging all and sundry for the amelioration of our sports from a technical point of view. Will they do so? Well the onus is on them to do exactly that for posterity!

On the organization and administration perhaps, I am better poised to delve in-depth into that as that may be my area of expertise to engage Gambians on lessons learnt and the way forward. To begin with, the all hands on deck syndrome regardless of any affinity of politics, religion, sector and relative thus denouncing our own ostracization attitude was very pointal thus one lesson learnt.

Furthermore, the realism of accepting and owning up where one goes wrong as opposed to our own indigence through tantalization has been the best practice by officials at that level. Can't we do the same? Therefore lesson two is to ensure that our parlances are not hyperbolic to warrant the tantalization in our sports whilst lesson three is to accept one's status or stance regardless of any shortfalls in order to go back to the drawing board to map out better strategies.

Overall, the gist of the write up is to awaken our sports officials and the public at large to focus on the best practices as had unrevealed in South Africa to adopt in order to better our own. Are we doing so? Without doubt, the answer has to be yes and to crown it with action thus pragmatism comes herein to play as we must brace up to do just that in preparation for our 2012 campaign leading to the 2014 World Cup if we are to make any headway.

Therefore, as food for thought, can the following suggestions of mine be considered to get us on the right footing?Convene a one-day stakeholder conference to discuss the tourney; Brainstorm on the significant happenings at management level; Set a task force to-coordinate the two above.
 
If these three points I proffer are strictly adhered to, then there is hope that our own preparations and overall development in sports especially football will be achieved soonest rather than later.
Can we oblige? Another challenge??? [The end]