The underlying issue here is transparency, governance and sport authority. In the current landscape, all three are lacking to some degree.
Based on my understanding, the current selection process is not simply about merit. Availability, eligibility — including whether a player is actually able to travel — behaviour, commitment and other practical considerations also come into play.
Those factors may be secondary in a more mature sporting system, but we also have to acknowledge the reality that the professional domino community is still quite small compared to other sports. That means the pool of players, especially at the highest level, is limited, and the logistics of putting together an international team can influence who is ultimately available for selection.
But What Exactly Is Merit?
This is where the conversation gets even more interesting.
We often say that players should be selected based on merit. But in the current landscape, how exactly do we determine merit?
Who decides who is a better player?
What evidence are they using?
What happens when ten knowledgeable people in the domino community have ten different opinions about the quality of a particular player?
One person may say a player is one of the best in Jamaica because they have consistently won major tournaments. Another may point to their performance in league play. Someone else may argue that a player is technically excellent but hasn't had the opportunity to compete at the highest level.
Without reliable statistics, rankings, competition records and a consistent history of performance, merit can easily become subjective.
And once merit becomes subjective, selection can unintentionally become influenced by reputation, relationships, visibility, availability or simply who people happen to know.
That does not necessarily mean that anyone is acting improperly. It means the system itself does not currently give us enough objective information to separate opinion from evidence.
This is one of the reasons statistics and rankings matter.
If we can eventually document things like match wins, losses, points, opponents, competition level, consistency, individual performance and other relevant measures, then the conversation changes.
We can still disagree about what makes someone a great domino player — because sport will always contain an element of judgment — but we would at least have a common body of evidence from which to have that discussion.
Merit should not simply be something we say. We should build a system that allows us to demonstrate it.
However, I don't think the absence of that system should be an excuse for a lack of transparency.
The bigger question is: What is the process, who has the authority to make the decision, what does it mean to be officially representing Jamaica, and where can the public verify that information?
Those are the systems that need to be established and made public.
WhatsApp conversations and word of mouth cannot be the official record of national representation. If we are serious about developing domino as a sport, we need a structure where the players, clubs, diaspora, sponsors, international organizers and the wider public can clearly understand who has been selected to represent Jamaica, under whose authority, through what process, and for what competition.
And perhaps that is the real conversation — not simply who is or isn't on a particular team, but whether we are building a system capable of answering that question fairly, transparently and consistently.
