Speyside gets title boost

The rul­ing came last week af­ter Pen­te­costal Light and Life failed to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel at a match its host­ed three weeks ago against Spey­side, but re­sult­ed in the match not be­ing played.

Pen­te­costal and Light and Life, a pri­vate ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion, could not ho­n­our its com­mit­ment to pro­vide at least three se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel at the match venue. The rule of the SS­FL states that schools are to pro­vide ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at its home match­es, which in­cludes ei­ther po­lice, any type of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, or of­fi­cers of gov­ern­ment's Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS).

The rule al­so states that among the three of­fi­cers, one is ex­pect­ed to be pre­cept­ed, which means hav­ing the au­thor­i­ty to car­ry a li­censed firearm.

The school's (Pen­te­costal Light and Life) in­abil­i­ty to pro­vide this, how­ev­er, led to the in­volve­ment of the league's dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee which took ac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that the school could not se­cure the ser­vices of MTS per­son­nel, which is used at all sec­ondary schools across T&T.

Syan­dene Black­man-Walsh, sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go arm of the SS­FL said her com­mit­tee is set to ad­ju­di­cate on an­oth­er mat­ter in­volv­ing Spey­side, which could po­ten­tial­ly hand the 2017 To­ba­go cham­pi­ons an­oth­er three points, in its pur­suit of claim­ing the zone ti­tle for the sec­ond time in two years.

This time the mat­ter in­volves Sig­nal Hill's in­abil­i­ty to change its uni­form as the home team dur­ing a home clash with Spey­side.

Sig­nal Hill, a sea­soned cam­paign­er in the schools league was un­able to meet the rule re­quire­ments which states the host team must change if there is a clash of uni­form colours.

It is un­der­stood that Sig­nal Hill of­fi­cials did com­mu­ni­cate with Spey­side be­fore the match pro­gramme in­form­ing them about their predica­ment. How­ev­er, Spey­side still sought to trav­el with one uni­form which re­sult­ed in a clash of colours pre­vent­ing the match from be­ing played.

The re­sults ac­ti­vat­ed the zone's dis­ci­pline com­mit­tee which will rule any­time.

The Big Five play­off among the win­ning Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion teams be­gins this af­ter­noon, but the To­ba­go zone is set to be de­cid­ed to­mor­row.