3 days ago
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President of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), Keith Wellington, said the late withdrawal of number of schools in the daCosta Cup has left some groups with as few as three teams, resulting in the organisation having to make adjustments in order to balance those groups.
Three groups (C, L, and M), only had three teams and, to give those groups adequate matches in the preliminary round, schools from adjoining parishes had to be transferred to those groups.
Wellington said the limited-games teams in those groups would be forced to play is unfair to them, and a hefty fine has been placed on the schools with late withdrawals, in order to discourage the practice.
“We wanted to have groups of between six and eight schools. Unfortunately, there are schools that decided not to participate at the very last minute. There were only three participating schools in St Thomas, so we had to bring over Fair Prospect High from Portland.
“In St Mary, we had only three schools so we had to bring schools from Portland to join them. And, in Westmoreland, we only had three schools as well,” he noted.
“It comes down to what schools are able to afford to do, but we didn’t want the schools to be too far apart, because travelling and those things will be affected
“But the problem we have is that some schools decided at the last minute that they weren’t going to participate, and what we have done is to place a heavy fine on them to discourage those types of action,” Wellington said at Wednesday night’s official launch of the 2025 schoolboy football competitions at the Summit hotel in New Kingston.
DaCosta Cup chairman Livern Wright explained that 77 schools will make up the rural area competition this season, and that the shortage in some groups forced the organisation to adjust the qualification format for the first round.
Thirteen zones will be contested, and groups with seven or eight teams will have three teams qualifying to the second round, while the teams with four in a group will have two automatic qualifiers.
“We will have the best third-place teams qualifying from the rest to end up making 32 teams (for second round).
“The ones (groups) that have seven will play in a format where they have six or so matches first. After that, depending on where they place, we are going to have the top four teams in that zone having a type of play-off, and the three who come out on top will be the ones that go through.
“So the top four will play off and, from that four, the top three will go through,” he explained.
For Wellington, the biggest issue with the smaller groups is that it doesn’t afford some schools the opportunity to play enough football.
“When a group is reduced to four, two teams will end their season after playing six games, and I think that is unfair.”
However, under the circumstances, he said, it was the fairest and most balanced system they could think of.
“I don’t believe there are any issues or cause to believe that the format is unfair, especially bearing in mind that, at the initial stage, even if the group is small, it’s two teams that will come out of the initial stage. And, for the larger group, it’s three teams that come out. And you will still have opportunities for best third place,” he said.
English (US) ·