Co­ca Co­la In­ter­Col cham­pi­on Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege (San Fer­nan­do) faces a chal­leng­ing sea­son with the loss of more than 98 per cent of their start­ing ros­ter from last year's Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL), a doubt­ful coach Shawn Coop­er said on Tues­day.

Its arch-ri­val Na­pari­ma Col­lege al­so faces a sim­i­lar predica­ment. Coach An­gus Eve said that his en­tire start­ing team, who won last year's Pre­mier Di­vi­sion League ti­tle, is out be­cause the play­ers have moved on. How­ev­er, the for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er said he is not con­cerned by it and will be­gin from scratch again, as it is a nor­mal sit­u­a­tion with schools' teams.

Coop­er, who guid­ed the south­ern team to its first In­ter Col ti­tle, said he will on­ly be­gin prepa­ra­tion for the schools' league af­ter the com­ing Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) Ex­am­i­na­tions sched­uled to start on Ju­ly 13. He said he has been mon­i­tor­ing the stu­dents' time ta­ble to de­ter­mine when his prepa­ra­tion pro­gramme will com­mence.

To date, the south­ern gi­ants have to wait un­til the play­ers from the team's start­ing squad sit ex­ams, and an ad­di­tion­al three who are cer­tain to be lost when they take the Caribbean Ad­vance Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE).

"We have 17 guys sit­ting ex­ams, and that is the whole team I am talk­ing about. Among those who not writ­ing ex­ams rep­re­sents about 12 fringe play­ers from Form four who are go­ing in­to Form five and some of them who were not on the team last year. How­ev­er, the core of the team comes from the 17 group.  

"I have to wait un­til ex­ams fin­ish re­al­ly to start be­cause af­ter this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and peo­ple missed school, so I can­not af­ford to call the boys out to train­ing and ex­ams com­ing up. I have to let them con­cen­trate on their ex­ams."

The High Street, San Fer­nan­do school is set to be­gin this sea­son with a clash with Na­pari­ma for the Dig­i­cel Cup on Sep­tem­ber 11, ac­cord­ing to a re­vised fix­ture that was dis­trib­uted by SS­FL of­fi­cials re­cent­ly. How­ev­er, Coop­er said ac­cord­ing to the fix­ture, Pre­sen­ta­tion will be­gin its sea­son lat­er on Sep­tem­ber 16 with a match against Moru­ga Sec­ondary at home.

On Mon­day, SS­FL pres­i­dent William Wal­lace said his ex­ec­u­tive will meet to­mor­row to de­cide on the tour­na­ment, such as the for­mat etc. He told Guardian Me­dia Sports on June 4 that it could be a short­ened sea­son due to the coro­n­avirus.  

Mean­while, Eve said he saw no need for the for­mat of the League to change.

He ex­plained, "School is sup­posed to open on the Sep­tem­ber 1, so once the coun­try con­forms to the guide­lines of the gov­ern­ment and there are no re­al is­sues, I don't see why we have to change the for­mat in any way. All of the fields are pay­ing venues so you can still on­ly bring the of­fi­cials of the game, the man­ag­er, the masseuse etc and the games can be played with no fans. It is be­ing done all over the world at present."

Na­pari­ma has lost its whole team al­ready, as none of the first-team play­ers will be el­i­gi­ble to play this sea­son, point­ing to strik­ers Seon Ship­ley and Isa Bram­ble to­geth­er with the tal­ents of At­i­ba Lewis, Tariq Samp­son, De­clan Mar­celle and Mark Ramdeen among oth­ers. Sim­i­lar to Pre­sen­ta­tion, Eve plans to com­mence prac­tice af­ter the ex­am­i­na­tions in Ju­ly.

Over in To­ba­go, Spey­side coach Ker­ry Lynch said that he will al­so be­gin train­ing in mid-Ju­ly. He ex­plained that while he will have most of his team for this sea­son, he is on­ly con­cerned about two key play­ers, Nicholas Sanchez and Da­le­on Beck­les, as both will be sit­ting the CSEC ex­am this month.