At long last, the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed TT Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) kicked off Fri­day at the Ma­haica Sport­ing Com­plex in Point Fortin.

It took ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 months to plan this league as they want­ed to en­sure every­thing was in place be­fore open­ing the games to the pub­lic and the play­ers. I dis­agreed with this idea as this league should have got go­ing 12 months ago as our play­ers have been sit­ting ea­ger­ly await­ing top-flight foot­ball.

Thank­ful­ly, the As­cen­sion League led the way with a tour­na­ment last year and to­geth­er with Tiger Tanks, who spon­sored an Un­der-20 tour­na­ment, foot­ball was played at a com­pet­i­tive lev­el. We al­so had the rein­tro­duc­tion of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League, which had some ex­cel­lent crowds for the league fi­nal and the var­i­ous In­ter­col games in all the re­spec­tive zones.

Per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, with com­pet­i­tive lo­cal foot­ball now up and run­ning, T&T’s play­ers will be able to show­case their tal­ent and give coach An­gus Eve a much larg­er lo­cal pool to se­lect play­ers from for the na­tion­al team, es­pe­cial­ly with some key in­ter­na­tion­al games on the hori­zon.

I jour­neyed down to Point Fortin to do com­men­tary as Sports­max was cov­er­ing the open­ing games. On be­half of the peo­ple of Point Fortin and the en­vi­rons, I am plead­ing to the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port to fix the roads; they are de­plorable. Don’t we have a pitch lake in La Brea? In­deed, some­thing can im­prove the state of the roads, es­pe­cial­ly if clubs have to trav­el to Ma­haica to play games against the home team - Point Fortin Civic.

The ex­ec­u­tive of the League tried their best to make the open­ing a gala one as ex­pect­ed. There was en­ter­tain­ment ga­lore with Olatun­ji, Fon­claire Steel Or­ches­tra, Siparia Rhythm Sec­tion and Mal­ick Tas­sa Drum­mers. They were com­ple­ment­ed by dancers as well as men and women in car­ni­val cos­tumes. It was in­deed an ex­cel­lent show to open the league.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly for me, there was no open­ing cer­e­mo­ny with some­one de­clar­ing the tour­na­ment open and maybe some py­rotech­nics to add to the glitz and glam­our of the en­ter­tain­ment pro­vid­ed. Hav­ing the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment meet the teams in the open­ing game would have al­so added to the im­por­tance of the oc­ca­sion.

The ab­sence of a big crowd for the open­ing could have been bet­ter. I pre­sume that the tim­ing was too ear­ly, at 5 pm on a Fri­day. In hind­sight, a 6.30 pm start with just one game in­clu­sive of the home team tak­ing the field may have seen a big­ger turnout of spec­ta­tors. The Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies, Ja­son Williams, did his ut­most to get those in at­ten­dance in­volved with some give­aways and oth­er forms of en­ter­tain­ment. I hope the League will get some prod­uct spon­sors on board to at­tract the crowds. Those spon­sors can show­case their prod­ucts dur­ing the half­time in­ter­val so that spec­ta­tors can en­joy the foot­ball and walk away with some­thing.

The league has to be prop­er­ly mar­ket­ed, as many foot­ball fans are frus­trat­ed with the per­for­mances of most of the na­tion­al teams and with the stan­dard of play from lo­cal club play­ers. This league could be a cat­a­lyst for en­cour­ag­ing the fans back to foot­ball.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly (I have to use that word again), we can­not leave the mar­ket­ing to the clubs as I am un­cer­tain and un­aware of their abil­i­ty to mar­ket them­selves. The league must give in­for­ma­tion on the clubs, their his­to­ry, their play­ers, who can we look for­ward to see­ing, what their chances are etc etc.

What about ma­jor spon­sor­ship? With Sports­max cov­er­age of the games, sure­ly it can be an easy sell to cor­po­rate T&T. I can­not re­mem­ber see­ing one bill­board at the open­ing game, which was huge­ly dis­ap­point­ing.

In terms of the ac­tu­al foot­ball, Match­day one has been com­plet­ed, with on­ly Po­lice FC and La Hor­quet­ta Rangers FC (who is over­seas on tour) hav­ing their game post­poned. All the big guns are com­pet­ing and, in what was termed a cen­tral der­by in the open­ing game be­tween W Con­nec­tion and Cen­tral FC, the lat­ter came out vic­to­ri­ous. W Con­nec­tion is not the force it once was. It ap­peared to have a young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced team, so it was no sur­prise that Cen­tral FC took con­trol of the mid­field with their ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers and thor­ough­ly de­served their 2-0 vic­to­ry.

The sec­ond game of the dou­ble­head­er saw the home team Point Fortin Civic take on Club San­do. Af­ter tak­ing the lead, Club San­do was held to a 1-1 draw by the home team in what was an even­ly con­test­ed game. Ad­mit­ted­ly, I thought the Point team would have won based on home ad­van­tage and the ex­pe­ri­ence in their line­up, but Club San­do is a plucky out­fit, and they fight for every ball.

The sur­prise to me thus far oc­curred on Sat­ur­day at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um (Ari­ma), where AC Port of Spain hand­ed De­fence Force a 3-0 whip­ping. ‘Army’ had their chances to score but could not take them, how­ev­er, a calm and col­lect­ed AC POS out­fit soaked up some ear­ly pres­sure, kept their shape and made their chances count. This is a good vic­to­ry for them, and they are a dan­ger­ous team not to be tak­en light­ly. No doubt, ‘Army’ will come back bet­ter pre­pared af­ter this de­feat; they had some stal­warts on the bench who I ex­pect will be play­ing from the next game, and they will tweak their sys­tem and learn from the ev­i­dent mis­takes in their open­ing game.

The fi­nal two games on Sun­day were played be­fore a large and ap­pre­cia­tive crowd which was good to see at the Ari­ma Velo­drome. Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed scored two ear­ly first-half goals against a ner­vous Cunu­pia FC in the open­er. From there, Cale­do­nia just man­aged the game and was nev­er test­ed by Cunu­pia. The fi­nal game be­tween San Juan Jabloteh and new­com­ers Pris­ons Ser­vices saw a fast-paced game be­tween two teams who could not be sep­a­rat­ed. Jabloteh al­so has a young team who will im­prove, while Pris­ons are in the right place in the league.

In clos­ing, can those in au­thor­i­ty do some­thing about the con­di­tion of the grounds? They were ter­ri­ble. If we want to see good foot­ball, the con­di­tions un­der­foot must be good, or play­ers will get in­jured. Good luck to all clubs!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.