Having just returned from our clubs Champions League second leg encounter, I cannot help making comparisons between what the clubs have here in Malta, a land of only 400,000 inhabitants and what the Faroese clubs have in an even smaller (population wise) land with a population of just over 40,000!

My Faroese counterparts could probably see the envy in my eyes when we were shown around their magnificent training facilities.

On one side, there is the national stadium, a small compact stadium with a grass pitch (the only one on the Islands by the way) which has seating for approximately 6,000 persons, dressing rooms, a clinic and a reception hall overlooking the pitch for VIP guests.

On the other side, the local club from the capital, B36 Torshavn have a full size artificial training pitch with fourth generation turf, similar to the facilities owned by the Jesuits at St Aloysius College.

Side by side to this pitch is another artificial pitch where the home games are played. This pitch is an older type of turf, similar to that of the Centenary Stadium under the charge of the MFA. The B36 director stated that this surface was going to be replaced at the end of this current season (October) by the state of the art fifth generation surface which is also FIFA approved.

These facilities are owned by a club which hails from the capital, Torshavn, but still, the population is only 5,000 people, similar to Mellieha for example!

This, incidentally, is not the only stadium on the Islands. We were offered and gladly accepted, to train in the facilities owned by Vagar, a small village on a separate Island, with a population of not more than maybe 1,500 people.

The facilities were also very good – a good full size artificial pitch, dressing rooms and even a small stadium. This type of stadium is available in all of the small villages dotted throughout the Island archipelago, not at all renowned for its football achievements, quite frankly, just like us.

They do, however, achieve results when facing so called ‘small’ opposition just like themselves, though in comparison, in our case, they were still outnumbered ten to one.

So one may ask, how do they do it? The answer is simple – Local Government. Being an isolated country that they are, the Local Government understands the civic duty it has to provide decent facilities that will secure the healthy upbringing of their younger generation. Sporting facilities are considered a public priority, just as education, healthcare and other essential services are considered in all developed countries.

Last year, I also had to make envious comparisons while touring the facilities available in Cyprus, though as if to relieve a guilty conscience, I found refuge in believing that it was due to the fact that the Cypriots had a land mass many times larger than Malta and a population double that of ours.

This time round, I did not have such an excuse readily available, so yes, on behalf of our children and their children I would like to lodge this protest with our authorities.

We are not doing enough. We are not providing the necessary infrastructure to keep our children away from vices such as drug abuse. This is not only where football is concerned. It applies to all sports.

Should we just turn the other way and admit that we are a weak nation where sport is concerned? The results we achieve are dismal to say the least, especially when we compare ourselves “like with like”. The Small Nations Games are a case in point.

There is only one common denominator with all of this – the facilities. Our clubs cannot afford to build the facilities we need to sustain the healthy progress our counterparts from other small counries are making. The financial burden cannot and should not be left only with the football nurseries and clubs, athletic associations and clubs or other sporting federations.

If the government is not willing to distribute funds directly to the clubs, it should at least intervene directly to see that sporting facilities are built to the specifications required so that our nation’s future generations stand a sporting chance.

As it is now, the chances are remote and usually dependent on luck and not sporting merit.