When the controversial rollover policy was introduced five years ago many ex-pats who had lived in Cayman felt aggrieved. It was made law on 1 January 2005 and designed to safeguard jobs for Caymanians. The timing wasn’t great because it was four months after the devastating effects of Hurricane Ivan and many ex-pats without strong ties to the Cayman Islands had left anyway.

The law states that non-Caymanians are only permitted to reside and work here for a maximum of seven years unless they satisfy the criteria of key employees. Anyone who is rolled over has to leave the Islands for a minimum of one year before starting their seven-year stint afresh.

There was a grace period of a couple of years for those who had already lived in Cayman for five years but they were not exempt.

As the seven year period since the start of the rollover policy edges towards the end of its sixth year, some ex-pats here are already seriously considering their next move, especially those who enjoy the marvellous sports facilities in the Cayman Islands.

Football, cricket and rugby are the biggest team sports on the Island and so far they have generally been only slightly affected.

Bobby Sairsingh, president of Roma United Football Club, has mostly Jamaicans in his team. They all have colourful nicknames like ‘Gaza’, ‘Stammer’, ‘Tallman’ and ‘Old School’. They have a great team spirit but a high turnover of players partly because of the transient nature of the work force here in the blue collar trades. Yet the rollover policy has not greatly affected them.

“Over the past eight years that I’ve been involved with Roma, I know of only three players who have been affected and one who will be next year,” says Sairsingh. “The loss of the players to rollover did not affect the team significantly as the team has always made necessary adjustments due to the transient nature of the typical Roma footballer. There was a netball player/manager who was rolled over. It was a significant loss administratively but our team filled in and achieved our best ever results on the courts without her.

“The impending loss of our best player next year is expected to be significant but we are preparing contingencies as our player/manager will be back. Over the past three years, we have been actively recruiting young Caymanian players from the diaspora to ensure continuity of our brand.”

Englishman Neil Purton is a leading figure with Sunset Football Club, as a player, coach and administrator. He says: “I can’t think that we have been affected by the rollover at all. I can however think of some players we would have liked to have rolled over!”

Pete de Vere is a rugby player and the local rugby union’s press officer for the sport. He agrees that rollover has not had a profound effect on domestic rugby because the expatriate workforce in Cayman are fairly transient anyway.

“People come to Cayman to work and play for a couple of years and then move on,” de Vere says. “Occasionally we find people who come here and want to make Cayman their home but as far as I can see this is becoming less and less the case. The result is that Cayman rugby keeps plugging away.”

He says that it is always sad to see team-mates leave but there are always new players to take their place. He does add though that rollover has had a major effect in terms of international hopes. “Building a team or building a national programme can take many years and using local rugby as an example, our technical director Richard ‘Grizz’ Adams has recently had his permanent residency application turned down.

“The effect this has is far more reaching than most might accept because when you’ve been on island for an extended period of time your skill set is hard to replace, especially in an area such as this where your work involves hundreds of ex-pats and locals alike who rely on you to keep these programmes running. People like this cannot be replaced overnight and indeed the act of replacing them can set back a programme or an association many years.

“In short, a player or team-mate being rolled over is hard on a team but you can deal with it, but losing a coach and a mentor to a term limit policy is disastrous.”

Rowena Lawrence is captain of the women’s rugby side. She points out a different aspect to rollover and it is one of attitude in that people know in advance they have only a limited time here so never really see it as “home”. “People know that they have limited time here so that they come here with the intention that they will leave after a short time and return home or elsewhere where they can actually set up a life without the concern of having to leave. So even though they aren’t rolled over, they never plan to stay long because of the rollover policy.”

Mark Woollard, team manager of DHL Cayman Storm rugby team, thinks rollover does affect the morale of a team. “We have some excellent players who are integral to our team who are planning on leaving soon and we will struggle with that. We are working so hard to make rugby much more of a Caymanian sport but with so many demands on Caymanian athletes we find it difficult to get them to commit to rugby. Due to a reliance on the ex-pat community, we will face this problem for a while yet.” Currently half the team is Caymanian and that number seems to be increasing each year He says that they have lost some talented ex-pats before their time is up and he has noticed an increase in this since the economic downturn and there are definitely less ex-pat rugby players on island now compared to 18 months ago.

There are many Caribbean ex-pats in cricket who work in the police and prison service who could be affected by the rollover policy eventually. So far it has not been too badly affected.