A whop­ping $2.3 mil­lion have been put out on the As­cen­sion Foot­ball League, to en­sure foot­ball in T&T gets back on track, cour­tesy an un­known Unit­ed States cloth­ing com­pa­ny that is de­sirous of en­ter­ing the Caribbean mar­ket.

The League is set to kick off on Fri­day with two match­es, one at the Ari­ma Velo­drome be­tween home team FC San­ta Rosa and Queen's Park CC from 8 pm, and an­oth­er at the Guayagua­yare Recre­ation Ground be­tween Guaya Unit­ed and Po­lice FC from 6 pm.

At a launch at Galery 1 of the Ho­tel Nor­mandie in St Ann's yes­ter­day, chief or­gan­is­er Richard Piper said As­cen­sion's in­put has been grand, and it ranges from prize monies to pay­ments for pro­mo­tion and tele­vi­sion cov­er­age, to in­sur­ance for play­ers, and pay­ment of all of­fi­cials.

As re­port­ed in the Guardian yes­ter­day, the League will be played in two di­vi­sions, each com­pris­ing 12 teams. Di­vi­sion I will fea­ture Guaya Unit­ed, Po­lice FC, FC San­ta Rosa, Queen's Park, Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, San Juan Jabloteh, Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed, Prison Ser­vice FC, Matu­ra Re-Unit­ed, Club San­do, Cunu­pia FC and De­fence Force, all bat­tling for a win­ner's cheque of $250,000, as well as $125,000 and $75,000 for sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly.

Di­vi­sion II com­pris­es Harlem Strik­ers, UTT, Moru­ga FC, Po­lice FC, Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed, Mara­bel­la Fam­i­ly Cri­sis Cen­tre, RSSR FC, Bethel Unit­ed, Club San­do Up­ris­ing Youths, San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants, Erin FC and De­porti­vo PF, is a com­bined team from the Point Fortin foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion held ear­li­er this year. They will be com­pet­ing for $100,000, $65,000 and $35,000 as the top three prizes.

Har­ford said as or­gan­is­ers they have tak­en out an in­sur­ance pol­i­cy which will cov­er play­ers for in­juries and death in the sum of $5,000 (in­jury) and $10,000 (death) to go to next of kin. The pol­i­cy will al­so cov­er team of­fi­cials.

He al­so lashed out at North East Stars Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Di­rec­tor Michael Awai for claims there is no se­cu­ri­ty for play­ers, say­ing it is stan­dard pro­ce­dure in foot­ball that the home team is re­spon­si­ble for se­cu­ri­ty.

The league is set to be a one-round com­pe­ti­tion but could go for two rounds if monies promised to clubs by the gov­ern­ment for the com­ing T-League lat­er this year, does not come.

"The As­cen­sion League has its birth through this des­per­ate need as you are aware, the promised fund­ing from the gov­ern­ment has not yet ma­te­ri­alised to af­ford the start of the TT Pro League sea­son, and the ex­pect­ed funds from the FI­FA, has al­so not yet ma­te­ri­alised, so we have reached out to the As­cen­sion peo­ple and they have ac­cept­ed," Har­ford said.

Richard Piper, the tour­na­ment di­rec­tor said, "The tour­na­ment will mir­ror the op­er­a­tions of the T-League when it gets start­ed. As part of the sanc­tion of the TTFA we had to have an in­dem­ni­ty clause that says they are not go­ing to be re­spon­si­ble for any­thing per­tain­ing to this tour­na­ment, and we gave them the as­sur­ance that this will not hap­pen."

Ac­cord­ing to Piper, an­oth­er in­no­v­a­tive as­pect of the tour­na­ment is that there is no reg­is­tra­tion fee. Teams will al­so re­ceive ap­pear­ance fees of $2,000 for Di­vi­sion I and $1,000 for Di­vi­sion II for each match, and Flow will pro­vide tele­vi­sion cov­er­age of match­es which will be aired as a pack­age on any giv­en day in the week.

Mean­while, Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, which has spent in ex­cess of $5 mil­lion to up­grade its fa­cil­i­ty at Phase Two La Hor­quet­ta, has re­quest­ed that its match­es played there.