ABBA: Championship billboard is team’s responsibility

President of the Antigua & Barbuda Basketball Association (ABBA), Daryll Matthew, has addressed the delay in mounting a banner depicting this year’s Division One basketball champions, Hands Up Foundation (HUF) Baldwin Braves, on a billboard at the JSC basketball complex.
Braves captured the national title in April but is yet to have a banner bearing a photograph of the team erected at the facility. The billboard still houses a photo of last season’s champions, Cutie’s Ovals Ojays.
According to Matthew, the association is still awaiting the banner which is the sole responsibility of the championship team.
“Digicel had put up a smaller billboard that we had asked them to put the championship team on. The following year when Ovals won, Ovals constructed the huge edifice that’s up there now and printed their own banner to put up on it because it’s quite expensive to do. Ovals having won the year after that did it again so it has never been a cost the association has ever covered,” the ABBA president said.
“When Braves won I said to Imp [Craig Anthony] that I can give them the information so they could print the banner. The structure is already there and once they print the banner then we would mount it for you which they agreed to do. I don’t know if they have gotten it printed as yet,” he added.
Reiterating that the matter “has gone on way too long” Matthew said, I think it is a disservice to our national champion to not have their billboard up as yet and that is something that needs to be addressed immediately.” 
The ABBA president said, “The last conversation I had with Imp and Braves team is that they were supposed to have printed the banner and bring it for us to get mounted but I am not sure if it has been printed as yet and so I really need to follow up with that.”
Efforts to reach members of the Braves team for comment proved futile.