WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Ari­ma North Sec­ondary has paid the ul­ti­mate price for its use of trio Josi­ah Joseph, and broth­ers Leonar­do and Le­an­dro Da Cos­ta in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL).

Yes­ter­day the SS­FL's Cre­den­tial Com­mit­tee, af­ter more than a week of de­lib­er­a­tions, ad­judged that the trio could not play in the League as form four trans­fer re­peat.

The com­mit­tee which in­clud­ed Azaard Khan, Ger­ald El­liot and Lau­rence Seep­er­sad, ap­peared to have ex­er­cised a silent rule which gave it the pow­er to in­ter­pret the SS­FL rules in in­ci­dences such as this one.

The rule re­gard­ing re­peat states clear­ly states that stu­dents re­turn­ing to school af­ter the CSEC ex­ams must have at least two sub­jects. Joseph, a past stu­dent of Suc­cess Laven­tille has one, while the Da Costas al­so pos­sess­es a pass each.

Travis Mul­raine, the Ari­ma coach ar­gued that the school did not break any rules of the schools league, as the stu­dents were tak­en in­to form four on a le­git­i­mate re­peat, aimed at as­sist­ing the play­ers to at­tain their qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

On­ly re­cent­ly a for­mer su­per­vi­sor of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, who spoke on con­di­tions of anonymi­ty, dis­missed talks of a form four re­peat, say­ing there is no such thing. "The on­ly way a stu­dent can re­peat any­where in the school sys­tem is if he/she has not yet tak­en the CSEC ex­am. Af­ter that one can on­ly re­peat in form five," the source ex­plained.

With the rul­ing the 'Di­al Dy­namos', a foot­ball gi­ant in the east zone for many years in the top flight, have now had all its points tak­en away, leav­ing it on ze­ro points af­ter nine round of match­es. The school was com­fort­ably in the sec­ond po­si­tion at the be­gin­ning of the week, but SS­FL of­fi­cials have now de­cid­ed that all its op­po­nents for the sea­son will be award­ed three points and 3-0 vic­to­ries for the il­le­gal use of the play­ers.

Guardian Me­dia Sports learnt that the com­mit­tee al­so agreed to keep the stu­dents in the school sys­tem at form four. How­ev­er, the de­ci­sion for them to en­ter form five next year will rest in the hands of Ari­ma North prin­ci­pal Vish­nu Debe to con­vince Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials to al­low them to sit CSEC a sec­ond time on a 'spe­cial case' sce­nario.

Oth­er­wise, come next year, the trio will have to seek en­try in­to a pri­vate ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion or to go through the Jan­u­ary/June pro­ce­dure to take the ex­ams on their own.

William Wal­lace, the SS­FL pres­i­dent de­scribed the mat­ter like a strange one but in­sist­ed his or­gan­i­sa­tion still has to stand firm on its con­sti­tu­tion. "All we have done re­al­ly is stay to our rules. Where our rules are not stat­ed, the SS­FL has the right to rule, as stat­ed in our con­sti­tu­tion," Wal­lace not­ed.

He ex­plained that while the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has the au­thor­i­ty to al­low stu­dents in school at any lev­el and at any length of time, the SS­FL is guid­ed by its own laws.

Con­tact­ed Mul­raine said dis­ap­point­ing­ly that all his school's hard work has gone down the drain. He blamed it on the re­luc­tance of teach­ers at the school to take in foot­ballers on re­peat, say­ing one of their best play­ers opt­ed to go to Va­len­cia Sec­ondary be­cause of this sit­u­a­tion.

Mean­while, Holy Cross Col­lege, the school that lodged the ap­peal against Ari­ma, has in­creased its lead on the stand­ings to 19 points af­ter eight match­es, five ahead of its clos­est ri­val Mal­abar on 14 points, with one round of games to go.

Holy Cross is now as­sured of a place in the Cham­pi­on of Cham­pi­ons play-off at the end of the sea­son.

Match­es where points were de­duct­ed:

11/9/18 Ari­ma North vs El Do­ra­do East, the orig­i­nal re­sult was 4-0 Ari­ma. New Re­sult, 3-0 for El Do­ra­do

14/9/18 Mal­abar Sec vs Ari­ma North, the orig­i­nal re­sult was 5-0 Ari­ma. New Re­sult 3-0 for Mal­abar

18/9/18 Ari­ma North vs Holy Cross, orig­i­nal re­sult was 3-3. New re­sult 3-0 Holy Cross.

21/9/18 S/Grande Sec vs Ari­ma North. Orig­i­nal re­sult 8-0 for Ari­ma. New re­sult 3-0 San­gre Grande.

25/9/18 Ari­ma North vs El Do­ra­do West. Orig­i­nal Re­sult 3-0 Ari­ma. New re­sult 3-0 El Do­ra­do West.