Whitmore

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa:JAMAICA'S Reggae Boyz arrived in South Africa yesterday evening, keen on recharging their batteries for Tuesday night's friendly international against the hosts, following some energy-sapping travelling and unexpected airport delay on their arrival here near 5:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. Jamaica time).

The Jamaicans departed Kingston near 2 p.m. on Thursday and travelled on a four-hour path to Atlanta. After hustling through US immigration and customs, approximately two hours later they were boarded and set off for Johannesburg, on a flight that lasted 15 hours.

Fortunately, the transatlantic flight to the most southern end of the African continent never contained any long or serious stretch of turbulence to place much additional stress on the body.

against expectations

What did - much against expectations - was a passport issue involving US-based striker Omar Cummings; and the misplaced bag belonging to team physician Dr Mark Sanderson.

The Cummings situation appeared more serious as the player could have been denied entry to the country because a portion of the leaf on the front page of his Jamaican passport was torn off, and the cover was also torn off the other part of the travel document.

The portion of the leaf torn off contained the last two letters of his surname. So instead of his name appearing as Omar Cummings on the front page of the passport, it appeared as Omar Cummin.

The striker explained that the piece of page from his passport was torn off accidentally by the person detaching the portion of the I-94 form from his passport - which was stapled - while he was in the process of executing his departure from the United States en route to South Africa.

two-hour wait

It led to a near two-hour wait inside the terminal at the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannes-burg, as the entire Jamaican party waited on their teammate while the team's manager, Howard Bell and head of delegation Garfield Sinclair, intervened.

Horace Reid, the Jamaica Football Federa-tion general secretary, who had travelled ahead of the team to South Africa and met the delegation at the airport, later became part of the negotiating team and said it took "some amount of calling back and forth" between immigration officials in South Africa and Jamaica to rectify the situation.

The team actually left the airport before the process was completed. Cummings arrived later and said an agreement was reached for him to be given an immigration certificate to explain how his travel document was damaged.

Progress was also made in the case involving Dr Sanderson, who had only got one of his two bags. The doctor pointed out that while he was not in possession of his belongings, checks revealed "that the bag was in fact sent on the flight to South Africa" and they were awaiting a baggage number to retrieve and return.

The weary Jamaican gang then made a brief journey by bus to the Southern Sun OR Tambo Inter-national Airport Hotel, where they sorted themselves out quickly as the check-in had already been dealt with, then went about getting food and much-needed rest.

training today

Despite the heavy travelling, the team will train today (Saturday) in Bloemfontein.

"It's just to get their legs going," Whitmore said. "We don't want to just sit in any hotel. It'd be lovely if we had a pool or a jacuzzi. We'll basically start working on Sunday, Monday for the game on Tuesday."

Continuing, Whitmore added: "They (South Africa) are hosting the World Cup. We want to come here and make a mark. We've been out of the World Cup ... and we didn't do well in the Gold Cup.

"This is a chance to show what we're capable of doing and to keep Jamaica's name alive. The players are aware, they know that they are ambassadors and every one of them, we just want them to wear that yellow and green jersey with pride come Tuesday night and go out there and give their best. I'm very upbeat ... and I'm expecting a good performance."