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The 2024 ISSA Schoolboy football season gets underway on Saturday, September 07.
The season was officially launched on Wednesday night at the National Stadium East Field.
Eighty five teams will contest the Wisynco DaCosta Cup while the Digicel Manning Cup Competition will have 40 teams.
Clarendon College will open the defense of their DaCosta Cup title against Denbigh in the second game of a Catherine Hall triple header on the opening day.
Coach Lenny Hyde says the boys from Chapelton are ready and rearing to go.
Manning Cup champions Mona will play the first game of that triple header when they face Waterford and coach Craige Butler says he’s confident of a winning start.
Cornwall College and Herbert Morrison will square off in the feature game on that night in Mobay.
The Champions Cup featuring the four semi-finalists in Both Manning and DaCosta Cups, will get underway at a date to be announced.
Meanwhile, President of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association Keith Wellington says High Schools in Jamaica who participate in the Manning and DaCosta Cup competitions may soon have to look a the possibility of benefiting financially when their players are transferred straight out of school into professional clubs abroad.
Wellington highlighted at Wednesday’s official launch of the new schoolboy football season, that last season’s MVP Kaheem Dixon of Clarendon College had signed to play for English League One outfit Charlton Athletics, months after playing in the DaCosta Cup.
The previous season’s MVP Dujuan Richards of Kingston College also went straight into a professional setting after playing in the Manning Cup when he signed for Premier League club Chelsea.
Wellington says the amateur status of schoolboy football could make things a bit complicated, but he thinks it’s time the schools explore ways of recouping some of the resources put into developing the players when they leave straight out of high school into professional clubs overseas.
ISSA President Keith Wellington.
English (US) ·