By Neto Baptiste
Director of Sports, Heather Daley, has guaranteed that all fields earmarked for utilisation by the schools’ football programme will be fully prepared and ready ahead of scheduled matches.
Her promise comes just days after coordinator of schools’ football within the Ministry of Sports, Rowan Benjamin, expressed concerns over what he described as the unkempt state of some fields regularly utilised during the schools’ football leagues.
“We have never had a match postponed because of an unkempt field, so I want to assure the general public of that. We have had matches postponed because of a water-logged area, and that is expected when we have a high amount of rain, but we have never had a match postponed because of an unkempt field,” she said.
The schools’ programme is slated to kick off this afternoon with matches in its knockout competition with league play slated to commence early October.
Daley said it would not have been ideal to prepare fields weeks ahead of the programme.
“A couple of months before this, we had our fields looking like sand dunes. You must be able to give the grass time to grow so that as soon as you start playing on them you don’t have the areas looking like they were before. Our field will be marked and kept and so I think that was a little anxiety on the part of Mr Benjamin. I am not sure which fields he is talking of in particular, but we haven’t played matches in Jennings for year and if I might dare say so, since Pat White days,” the director said.
League play is expected to commence the first week in October and is expected to close by mid-January 2023.