The long-await­ed As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment, which caters for all foot­ball in T&T, in­clu­sive of the T&T Pro League, the T&T Su­per League, the Re­gion­al As­so­ci­a­tions (North­ern FA, South­ern FA, East­ern FA, Cen­tral FA, East­ern FA), the Women's Foot­ball League (WoLF), Beach Foot­ball and Fut­sal, is now set for a Sep­tem­ber start.

As­cen­sion's Foot­ball Di­rec­tor Ke­iron Ed­wards con­firmed that ap­proval to run the tour­na­ment was giv­en last year, and now with the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve a ne­ces­si­ty to have ac­tion on the field of play, his group has been putting every­thing in place for the go-ahead by the gov­ern­ment.

FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Robert Hadad had ex­pressed a de­sire to have a Uni­fied League of the T&T Pro and Su­per League, which was set to ri­val the As­cen­sion tour­na­ment this year. Ef­forts to start this Uni­fied League be­gan in 2019 with of­fi­cials from UE­FA, CON­CA­CAF, FI­FA and the T&TFA hav­ing dis­cus­sions, but this how­ev­er nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

Ed­wards told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day: "As­cen­sion is look­ing at play­ing in 2021, hope­ful­ly, once the re­stric­tions are lift­ed and play is al­lowed to re­sume, we would be look­ing at play­ing the As­cen­sion League. We did get sanc­tion by Robert Hadad and the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and by ex­ten­sion the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to have the League played. We were in the process of ex­e­cut­ing that sanc­tion when the gov­ern­ment halt­ed all sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and we put a halt on the League. Once that re­sumes, we're hop­ing to have that League held, sim­i­lar to the Eu­ros that is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place."

He al­so said: "Fur­ther to that we're hav­ing dis­cus­sions with clubs on vac­ci­na­tion among the play­ing pop­u­la­tion, the Pro League, Su­per League, the zon­al lev­els, where clubs are now col­lect­ing da­ta to see how many play­ers are com­fort­able with tak­ing the vac­cines, how many play­ers are hes­i­tant to take the vac­cines, and if we can do an ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­gramme, in terms of the im­por­tance of the vac­cines and what it re­al­ly means."

Guardian Me­dia Sports was al­so in­formed that once the League gets go­ing all play­ers, who have been in­ac­tive for al­most two years, will get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn a liv­ing, as well show­case their tal­ent to lo­cal se­lec­tors, with an aim of be­ing picked on the na­tion­al teams.

Ed­wards made it clear the idea be­hind the As­cen­sion was born out of the in­abil­i­ty of the T&T Pro League to have ac­tion back in 2019. But since its suc­cess­ful stag­ing in which the win­ning club- De­fence Force, re­ceived a whop­ping $250,000 prize.

The tour­na­ment will fea­ture cov­er­age from re­gion­al ca­ble tele­vi­sion net­work Sports­max, live cov­er­age from a lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tion and oth­er providers.