RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A San Fer­nan­do foot­ball club which has as­sist­ed hun­dreds of play­ers over the past three years has been in­vit­ed to com­pete in the Man­ches­ter 2023 East­er Cup sched­uled for April.

But Pre­miere Sports Club head coach Sharaz Ali said the team needs $300,000 to pay for ac­com­mo­da­tion and air­line tick­ets if they are to go to Eng­land for the com­pe­ti­tion on April 9-10.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ali said since the club start­ed in 2018, hun­dreds of youths have ben­e­fit­ted.

"We play three times a week at the Skin­ner Park Sec­ond Field and we fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment of young play­ers. We have chil­dren from dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties such as Em­bac­cadere, Pleas­antville, and San Fer­nan­do," he said.

Many times stu­dents can­not af­ford foot­ball boots and Ali said he was for­tu­nate that Gaf­far GPS has been sup­port­ing the club of­ten buy­ing foot­ball gear for un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren.

"Play­ers who show po­ten­tial, we give them a waiv­er on the fees and we en­cour­age them to stay on the path of good­ness and great­ness," Ali added.

He said the play­ers who start­ed with him at age 12 were now writ­ing the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions but had man­aged to stay on top of their grades.

" I am proud of them. Some of them are play­ing In­ter­col and are on the na­tion­al team and play­ing in leagues in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Foot­ball has had a pos­i­tive im­pact on them, al­low­ing them to ex­press them­selves and have a sense of all-around holis­tic de­vel­op­ment," he said.

Ali said fund­ing has been a ma­jor chal­lenge for the club.

"It is dif­fi­cult to run a club with hun­dreds of chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly since not every­one can af­ford the train­ing fee and that's why we have reached out to cor­po­rate T&T to help. Apart from this the Skin­ner Park Sec­onds Grounds need re­pairs. We al­so need as­sis­tance to fix the toi­lets," he said. He said his men­tor Joel War­ick, head coach of Trinci­ty Na­tion­als has been sup­port­ive.

"My goal is to help the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty. I want to have my fa­cil­i­ty one day where I can host tour­na­ments and in­vite in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers," he said.

The team's goal­keep­er Jay­den Pol­lard al­so called for sup­port.

"This trip holds a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties for me and my team­mates and we are look­ing for­ward to it," he said.

Par­ent Ginelle Fran­cois- Men­tor al­so praised the club say­ing she was pleased the fo­cus was not on­ly on foot­ball but al­so bal­anc­ing aca­d­e­mics with the sport.

"Foot­ball has de­vel­oped him holis­ti­cal­ly, I am see­ing an im­prove­ment in his de­port­ment, phys­i­cal­ly there is a dif­fer­ence and an im­prove­ment over­all," she said.

She added: "The Coach here push­es them aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly as well."

Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist the club can call Ali at 307-9924, or make do­na­tions to First Cit­i­zens Ac­count Num­ber 250-7109.