Speyside wins title in protest room

The school, Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion cam­paign­ers in 2015 and 2017, was award­ed the win by the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee of the To­ba­go arm of the SS­FL, af­ter Sig­nal failed to pro­vide a change of uni­form dur­ing a match three weeks ago, al­though they were the home team. The rule of the SS­FL states clear­ly the home team usu­al­ly changes its uni­form in the event of a clash of colours.

Sig­nal Hill had just one uni­form and at­tempt­ed to en­gage in a gen­tle­man's agree­ment with Spey­side for the en­counter.

How­ev­er, Spey­side man­ag­er Ker­ry Lynch said he nev­er agreed to change his cus­tom­ary green and yel­low uni­forms, as he could not have lo­cat­ed all his back­up kits for the match. He told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he com­mu­ni­cat­ed this to Sig­nal Hill of­fi­cials but it was ig­nored.

On­ly last week Spey­side re­ceived three points and goals af­ter Pen­te­costal Light and Life failed to pro­vide prop­er se­cu­ri­ty at a game with them. The match was even­tu­al­ly aban­doned, and the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee ruled that the pri­vate ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion breached the rules of the SS­FL.

With the two rul­ings, Spey­side earned six valu­able points which en­abled it to fin­ish ahead of sec­ond place Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary as the zone win­ner.

Spey­side will now face Mal­ick on Tues­day in its open­ing match of the Big Five play-off at St Mary Col­lege Ground. The top three teams will qual­i­fy for next year's pre­mier di­vi­sion. Lynch said his team was twice boot­ed out of the top flight school's league be­tween 2015- 2017, but now he wants to re­turn and stay among the top teams.

He said he does not know much about Mal­ick Sec­ondary, but he's con­fi­dent in his team, which com­pris­es a blend of in­ex­pe­ri­ence and sea­soned cam­paign­ers, such as Aminik­ki Richards, Ronal­do Samuel who came in from Sig­nal Hill this year, Ronal­do Al­leyne and 15-year-old Nicholas Sanchez, whom he de­scribed as a play­er for the fu­ture.