By Neto Baptiste
Coordinator of Schools Football within the Ministry of Sports, Rowan Benjamin, said entry level football at the secondary school level could be eliminated in an effort to shorten the programme.
Benjamin made the suggestion while speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, revealing that as it stands now, the competition takes up too much time where, in some instances, one school may have five teams spread across all boys and girls competitions.
“We don’t have enough time to complete all these games in such a short period of time and we’re talking about five teams per school and we’re going to have to look at eliminating one of these age groups and what comes to mind is the under-14s, and it’s sad to say, that but if you check years gone-by when we talk about the quality of the schools’ football and so on in the secondary schools where there were only two teams, but you get hundreds of boys wanting to make those two teams in the senior and the under-16s. We have to go back to that,” he said.
Benjamin is confident that with more players competing for limited places in the under-16 and under-20 teams that the quality could improve. He added however, that coaches would continue working with the younger players from a development standpoint.
“In terms of those that are coming in, going into the schools from the primary school level, it means then that coaches now will have to develop these youngsters within the schools system itself. Once a football coach is attached to a school I always let them know that their job is to convert everyone that goes to the school to play football,” the administrator said.
Having started in September, there are still some matches left in the Boys Under-20 competition with the semifinals and final slated for January while the final of the Girls Under-16 competition is also slated for next month
Princes Margaret School (PMS) has so far captured the Boys Under-14, Boys Under-16 and the Girls Under-20 titles.
