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By Neto Baptiste
Coordinator of Schools Football, Rowan “Porridge” Benjamin, has expressed disappointment over a decision by the All Saints Secondary School (ASSS) to pull its Boys under-20 squad from the senior competition.
Benjamin, who said he received word of the school’s decision on Monday, added that he was still hopeful the situation could be rectified while suggesting that their absence would subtract from the competitiveness of the competition.
“We also received a letter from the All Saints Secondary School that they would have pulled their under-20 boys for serious indiscipline reasons out of the competition. So these are things that we are facing – that we have to change schedule and manoeuvre that situation, especially on the first week. Hopefully we’re expecting that all these things should be ironed out. All Saints Secondary boys under-20 is one of those schools that are very competitive in the competition over the years so I’m very disappointed with that,” he said.
Benjamin also addressed a recent no-show by St Anthony’s Secondary School (SASS) who failed to turn out for their opening match in the boys under-16 division against Princess Margaret School (PMS) on Monday.
The coordinator said he has launched an investigation into the development as a similar scenario played out last year.
“There was a note sent to us that we’ll look at. We don’t want to say that the match is quite done and dusted in terms of default because last year we had a situation where they’re not showing up for the match against PMS also. This match yesterday [Monday] was against PMS and because of that, PMS would have, we can say, lost the championship [last year] because of that goal difference. They lost out by where the Antigua Grammar School who won the championship would have played against St Anthony and scoreD heavily against them,” he said.
Benjamin explained that he had discussions with St Anthony’s prior to their no-show against PMS and even put measures in place to assist with them getting to the venue.
“I don’t want to believe it is a trend that I’m picking up here but we have to have some discussions with the school. If we have to replay the match then we’ll do so but yesterday [Monday] we received information that they have problems with transportation and we said, ‘no, you can’t have problem with transportation’, so we organized transportation for them. We always organize transportation for St Anthony and letting them know we’ll pick them up at 2:15 p.m. only to receive a note that they are not ready to play. They’re not available to play. So it’s something that we have to investigate,” he told the Good Morning Jojo sports show.
The schools football league opened on Friday following a successful knockout competition.
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