Fif­teen teams will chal­lenge reign­ing cham­pi­ons and win­ners of four of the past six edi­tions of the com­pe­ti­tion, Na­pari­ma Col­lege for ti­tle ho­n­ours when the 2022 edi­tion of the Tiger Tanks Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) Pre­mier Di­vi­sion kicks off at sev­er­al venues Wednes­day af­ter­noon across the coun­try. The match that will hold the at­ten­tion will be St Au­gus­tine Sec0ndary dubbed the “Green Ma­chine” which will host Na­pa­ri­na Col­lege at Warn­er Street, St Au­gus­tine from 4 pm.

Guardian Me­dia Sports spoke to the coach­es of the var­i­ous teams about their prepa­ra­tions fol­low­ing the two-year with no com­pe­ti­tion be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which af­fect­ed all sports across the world.

GROUP A

Tacuma Jones (St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary): “For me as a first-time coach of the team at this lev­el it will be a chal­lenge as we have lost a lot of play­ers due to the two years of non-ac­tiv­i­ty be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. So we are re­al­ly in a re­build­ing stage, and my aim for this sea­son is to make sure that we stay up in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion and have some con­ti­nu­ity with the pro­gram for the next sea­son.”

Shiv­au­rn Hard­ing (Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary): “The team prepa­ra­tions have on­ly been for the past six to sev­en weeks, but the play­ers are all hyped and ready for the first game as well as the sea­son ahead. We are al­so hop­ing to have some ad­di­tion­al play­ers by our sec­ond match as they fi­nalise their pa­per­work fol­low­ing their CXC and GCE ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults.”

Ker­ry Lynch (Spey­side High): “Our prepa­ra­tions for this sea­son on­ly re­al­ly in­ten­si­fied over the last two weeks. We have a re­al­ly young team with most of the guys get­ting some ex­po­sure to com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing the Tiger Tanks Un­der-20 Tour­na­ment, and Next Lev­el Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed Un­der-19 Com­mu­ni­ty Cup and we are ex­pect­ing a de­cent sea­son, de­spite be­ing a to­tal­ly in­ex­pe­ri­enced team at this lev­el.”

Hut­son Charles (Fa­ti­ma Col­lege): “Fa­ti­ma’s prepa­ra­tions start­ed well as the nu­cle­us of the team has come through from the un­der-14s and un­der-15s, so we have a nice foun­da­tion from those teams of two years ago, and the guys are look­ing for­ward to the first game of the sea­son, and what lies ahead as well.”

Kyle Small (Pleas­antville Sec­ondary): “Our prepa­ra­tions for the sea­son were pret­ty okay, but we don’t have a lot of the play­ers from the last time we com­pet­ed at this lev­el. So it will be a chal­lenge for us and I ex­pect for most of the teams, but we are con­fi­dent that we have a squad that can com­pete as we ex­pect to fin­ish at least mid-ta­ble to main­tain our pre­mier­ship sta­tus.”

Ronald “Hus­tler” Daniel (St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege): “For each team, I ex­pect that prepa­ra­tions for the sea­son were a bit of a chal­lenge and dif­fi­cult with the new blood of tal­ent.

“At the same time our boys are very ex­cit­ed, but we are in a re­build­ing stage line all teams and it’s go­ing to take a lot of hard work, fo­cus, and de­ter­mi­na­tion for us to achieve our tar­gets.”

“One thing for cer­tain is that all teams know that St An­tho­ny’s will al­so come out to play and win, and we in­tend to be that way once again in every match.”

Ran­dolph Boyce (St Bene­dict’s Col­lege): “Pre-sea­son went well as we had a great turnout of play­ers for our ses­sions. But at the same time, we al­so had some chal­lenges with the in­clement weath­er that made it dif­fi­cult for us to use our field at times, but phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly the guys are ready and now it’s like an ex­am, they now have to go and per­form.”

Travis Mul­raine (Na­pari­ma Col­lege): “Our per­for­mance against Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in the Tiger Tanks Cup was not a bad one, and I was very sat­is­fied with how we pre­pared for the match and how we per­formed, but the re­sult did not go our way.”

“So from that game we know we have a few things that we still need to work on es­pe­cial­ly our play in the fi­nal third of the game with re­gards to our at­tack­ing play and sup­port as well.

GROUP B

Dwayne Davis (Trin­i­ty East Col­lege): “We have put in some work, but it’s al­so a start of a new pro­gram with new play­ers af­ter the two-year stop­page due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. We have not re­al­ly set any re­al tar­gets for the sea­son in terms of ta­ble fin­ish as we don’t re­al­ly know much about any of the op­pos­ing teams.

Dale Saun­ders (East Mu­cu­rapo): “Our pre-sea­son was a good one with a lot of young play­ers from the Form 1 to Form 3 group­ings and they have re­al­ly de­vel­oped well dur­ing our time to­geth­er so far. But, at the same time with youth play­ers you need time and while we have not set any re­al ex­pec­ta­tions, we do ex­pect to com­pete well and play good con­sis­tent foot­ball.”

Jaeel Jef­frey (Ch­agua­nas North): Prepa­ra­tion for us was not at the lev­el as well as we ex­pect­ed as we had a few hic­cups with play­ers who we were ex­pect­ed to be part of the team not do­ing so af­ter they weren’t suc­cess­ful with get­ting re­peats or ad­mit­tance to Form Six, af­ter their ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults.

“So we ba­si­cal­ly have a young team, with on­ly one play­er sur­viv­ing from the team that ac­tu­al­ly gained pro­mo­tion from the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion pro­mo­tion play­offs and we are just look­ing for­ward to see­ing the play­ers com­pete to the best of their abil­i­ty.”

Ken­wyne Jones (QRC): “Prepa­ra­tions have gone pret­ty well and we were re­al­ly de­light­ed to get the play­ers back out on the field of play af­ter the two-year ab­sence of foot­ball due to the pan­dem­ic. The young­sters have been starved of foot­ball for the past two years, so with com­pe­ti­tion set to re­sume they are all hyped and look­ing for­ward to rep­re­sent­ing their school with the aim of do­ing well.”

An­tho­ny “Chun” Bartholomew (Mal­ick Sec­ondary): “Our prepa­ra­tions were re­al­ly hit by the coro­n­avirus as par­ents were re­luc­tant to send their chil­dren out to train­ing, and over­all we haven’t re­al­ly trained much as a team.

“De­spite those set­backs, I ex­pect that the guys will go out and give off their best as they are tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als, but lack the ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­po­sure at this lev­el, and hope­ful­ly it will be good enough for us to stay in the di­vi­sion for the next sea­son.”

Kemp­ton Du­val (Moru­ga Sec­ondary): “I’m very op­ti­mistic about our chances in the com­pe­ti­tion as our main aim is to main­tain our sta­tus in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, this be­ing our first time back at this lev­el in a few years.”

“Along with fel­low pro­mot­ed teams Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, and Ch­agua­nas North, we will be com­ing against a core of teams who have the ex­pe­ri­enced at be­ing at this lev­el for a num­ber of years, so we just want to com­pete well, rep­re­sent our school Moru­ga as well as our com­mu­ni­ty proud­ly.”

Shawn Coop­er (Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of San Fer­nan­do): Com­ing off the win over bit­ter ri­val and reign­ing Pre­mier Di­vi­sion cham­pi­ons Na­pari­ma Col­lege in the Tiger Tanks Cup, we will be hop­ing to build on that win as the sea­son goes on.

“In say­ing that, our pre­sea­son was good one de­spite the per­sis­tent in­clement weath­er which forced us to do lots of our work in­doors.

“And against Naps, it showed that we still have a lot of fo work to put in to be ma­jor con­tenders, and as a young group of play­ers they will im­prove as the sea­son goes on.”

Stephen Clarke (San Juan North Sec­ondary man­ag­er): “Prepa­ra­tions for the sea­son was a bit stunt­ed as we would have lost a lot of the play­ers from the 2019 team over the past two years of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic who have now fin­ished school.

“So like most teams, we will be fea­tur­ing a lot of new and young play­ers who would have come up from Forms 2 and 3 but at the same time would have al­so missed out on com­pet­i­tive match­es for the past two years which sure­ly ham­pered their de­vel­op­ment.”

“So our first or­der of busi­ness in this year’s com­pe­ti­tion is try­ing to avoid fin­ish­ing in the rel­e­ga­tion po­si­tions, and by do­ing so we will be able to de­vel­op a team for next year.”

2022 SS­FL TEAMS

Group A

St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary, Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary, Na­pari­ma Col­lege, Spey­side High School, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Pleas­antville Sec­ondary, and St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege.

Group B

San Juan North Sec­ondary, Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary, Mal­ick Sec­ondary, East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary, Moru­ga Sec­ondary, Trin­i­ty Col­lege East, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege (San F’do)