NIGEL SI­MON

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

Shawn Coop­er, the coach of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, and Travis Mul­raine, coach of Na­pari­ma Col­lege were both pleased with the dis­plays of their re­spec­tive teams in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) Tiger Tank Cup match at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va on Fri­day.

The fix­ture which pit­ted the four-time SS­FL Pre­mier Di­vi­sion win­ners and de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Na­pari­ma Col­lege and reign­ing Co­ca-Co­la In­ter-Col ti­tle-hold­ers Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege against each oth­er end­ed 1-1 at the end of the 90-min­utes reg­u­la­tion time be­fore the lat­ter pre­vailed 3-2 on penal­ty-kicks.

Ear­li­er on in reg­u­la­tion time, Na­pari­ma went ahead af­ter on­ly 23 min­utes through Kanye Fran­cis be­fore Caleb Boyce drew Pre­sen­ta­tion lev­el in the 32nd.

Fol­low­ing four missed penal­ties at the start, ‘Pres’ got goals from Levi Jones, Cody Coop­er, and Adah Bar­clay, while ‘Naps’ got goals from cap­tain Omari Archer and Gio­van­ni Mc Knight.

Speak­ing af­ter the loss, for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er, Mul­raine, the first-year coach of Na­pari­ma Col­lege af­ter se­nior men’s na­tion­al team coach An­gus Eve stepped down from the role fol­low­ing four Pre­mier Di­vi­sion crowns in six years said he was pleased with the over­all ef­fort of his team and both teams over­all.

“I have to give them jus­tice, I think both teams per­formed well, and I think that go­ing for­ward we will see more qual­i­ty from the guys on the field. “

With re­gards to his team’s prepa­ra­tions for the sea­son af­ter the league was on a pause for the past two years due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, Mul­raine said, “Well the prepa­ra­tions was the Tiger Tanks Un­der-20 League be­cause most of these guys rep­re­sent­ed Club San­do.

“So my job was a bit easy just pol­ish­ing them up and try­ing to give my phi­los­o­phy, and feed them cer­tain things, and I think we will be good in the end.”

“The guys tried to ex­e­cute our game plan and of course, we have a few things to iron out, but I think by and large I was hap­py with the per­for­mance,” stat­ed Mul­raine.

Look­ing to­wards the start of the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion cam­paign in which four-time cham­pi­ons Na­pari­ma trav­els to St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary in their open­er on Wednes­day, Mul­raine, a for­mer Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege play­er said he was pleased that some of the guys showed a lot of con­fi­dence on the ball.

“Of course, we have some kinks to iron out as I said, so it’s back to the draw­ing board and Wednes­day the ball starts rolling again,” end­ed Mul­raine.

Coop­er aim­ing for ti­tle ho­n­ours

Coop­er, coach of the vic­to­ri­ous Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of San Fer­nan­do and for­mer ti­tle-win­ning coach with Na­pari­ma as well said his team per­formed be­yond ex­pec­ta­tions and fought like young li­ons.

“We were out­matched in the phys­i­cal as­pect of the game but sec­ond half we made a few tac­ti­cal changes and we start­ed press­ing them and we got in­to the game and I think we had a very good sec­ond half and topped it off with the penal­ties.”

Com­ing in­to the match, Coop­er who was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed the men’s na­tion­al Un­der-17 coach ad­mit­ted that his play­ers had a lot of nerves ahead of their first match of the sea­son, and the first in the com­pe­ti­tion since 2019 due to the pan­dem­ic.

He added, “Es­pe­cial­ly my son, to­day was his first of­fi­cial game, and to be play­ing in a mag­ni­tude of a game like this I had to set­tle him down be­cause we did a team talk with them lunchtime, and they all said that they were ner­vous.”

Players of Naparima College celebrate with midfielder Kanye Francis (C) after he scored their first goal during the SSFL Tiger Tanks Super Cup match between Naparima College and Presentation College San Fernando at the Ato Boldon Stadium in Balmain, Couva on Friday.

Daniel Prentice

“So first-half you saw in the first 15 to 20 min­utes we had a lot of prob­lems in set­tling down and the nerves got the bet­ter of them but com­ing down in the dregs of the match you saw that we could have played foot­ball and got a cou­ple of op­por­tu­ni­ties, and I am pleased with the per­for­mance.”

Be­ing the first match of the sea­son, Coop­er said from the match that they saw to­day I think foot­ball was in good hands, be­cause I think it was a very en­ter­tain­ing game and what we have been miss­ing.

“The boys even though they were out for two years I thought the stan­dard was pret­ty good.

Look­ing ahead to the SS­FL sea­son Coop­er said his team is well on its way to achiev­ing its tar­gets.

He boast­ed, “I told the prin­ci­pal I was not too con­cerned about this match to­day (Fri­day) as we are build­ing and by late Oc­to­ber or ear­ly No­vem­ber you will see the best out of this team.”

New sea­son, new for­mat, new spon­sor

For this year’s SS­FL sea­son, the first to be held since 2019 af­ter the 2020 and 2021 sea­sons were post­poned due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, Tiger Tanks will be the of­fi­cial ti­tle spon­sor of this year’s SS­FL, tak­ing over from Ja­maican-based sports tele­vi­sion net­work, Sports­max.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, a five-year agree­ment be­tween the SS­FL, Dig­i­cel, and Sports­Max was sched­uled to con­clude in 2020 be­fore the in­ter­ven­tion of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic threw every­thing in­to a tail­spin.

Un­der Tiger Tanks, the league is set to be well-served, in­clu­sive of uni­form pro­vi­sion and brand­ing, prizes, and the broad­cast­ing of match­es for all the di­vi­sions, in­clu­sive of the Pre­mier­ship, Cham­pi­onship, and all the low­er di­vi­sions.

The new for­mat of the 16-team Pre­mier Di­vi­sion sees the teams di­vid­ed in­to two groups of eight teams for one round of round-robin com­pe­ti­tion, that’s sev­en match­es for each team, at the end of which the top two in each pool will ad­vance to the crossover semi­fi­nals on Fri­day, Oc­to­ber 21 ahead of the fi­nal four days lat­er.

Both the semi­fi­nals and fi­nal are slat­ed for ei­ther the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo or the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va.

The 16-par­tic­i­pat­ing schools will see Group A com­prise Na­pari­ma Col­lege, St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary, Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary, Spey­side High School, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Pleas­antville Sec­ondary, and St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege, while Group B will fea­ture San Juan North Sec­ondary, Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary, Mal­ick Sec­ondary, East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary, Moru­ga Sec­ondary, Trin­i­ty Col­lege East, and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege (San F’do) with the open­ing round of match­es set for Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 14 with kick­off at 4 pm.

With re­gards to the de­mo­tion of teams from the SS­FL, the two bot­tom-placed teams will be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly rel­e­gat­ed and will be joined by the losers of the play­off be­tween the two teams to fin­ish sec­ond from bot­tom in their re­spec­tive groups.

At the same time, the win­ners of the five Cham­pi­onship Boys Di­vi­sions which will com­prise six teams team will then con­test a “Big-Five” round-robin se­ries at the end of which the top three fin­ish­ers will gain pro­mo­tion to the 2023 Pre­mier Di­vi­sion.