ANTHONY CREED, president of the Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL), was pleased with the recently- concluded 2016 season, which saw Shiva Boys claim the Premier Division crown, San Juan North take the Intercol title and Naparima earn the inaugural Big 4 trophy.
“We have three title sponsors,” said Creed during a recent interview.
“Shell and First Citizens sponsor the Premier Boys and Championship. They also sponsored the Girls Championship and Intercol.
Coca-Cola sponsored the Boys Intercol.
This season we finished with a Big 4, which was sponsored by Digicel Play, with the Intercol and League winners. It was the new addition for this season. We used to have a Big 4 at the end of the League.”
About the season itself, Creed noted, “things on the field went fairly well because, at the end of the day, the referees have their jobs to do, one way or the other.” He continued, “there were a couple issues that we had to iron out, which we have to really improve for the next season, which (are) the credential issues, where principals signed off on certain players without all of the information.
That could cause some changes after the fact.
We already have a meeting set up in January to fully discuss the manner in which credentials are dealt with, because sometimes there are principals that sign off on information (that) they are given.”
Asked if there is any plan to implement rules on player availability, Creed replied, “those rules have always been there. We have certain things within our constitution and there are also added stuff in the competition rules.
The key to it is making extra checks, to make sure the eligibility of players are in order. But I’m also saying it is the responsibility of the principals to ensure what they’re signing off on is the correct thing, because mistakes can be made.” He went on to state, “we have a meeting on January 11th to actually deal with all those matters, the post-mortem and what have you.
We’re also having our awards function on the 18th of January.”
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