It will be the end for fete-match teams that or­gan­ise and play match­es with­out the gov­ern­ment's ap­proval, and for those who play foot­ball and oth­ers sports in num­bers ex­ceed­ing five.

They will now be re­quired to seek ap­proval from the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, fol­low­ing on Mon­day's Min­istry of Health reg­u­la­tions which will be the guide for the re­turn of sports in safe zones.

Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe when asked if teams that play fete match­es at fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try were in breach of the reg­u­la­tions, she said: " If you're do­ing it through a reg­is­tered group, then the group writes to the min­istry, pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion, as it re­lates to who are the peo­ple who are go­ing to be par­tic­i­pat­ing, copy of their id, copy of their vac­ci­na­tion cards and that will be checked up­on en­try at the spe­cif­ic fa­cil­i­ty."

Cud­joe, whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty it was to tweaked a pro­pos­al that out­lined how sports would re­turn via safe zone said: " Peo­ple want to play, peo­ple want to get out. We have al­lowed for in­di­vid­u­als and gath­er­ings un­der five.

For na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies, they were al­lowed to train and com­pete for na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions. In this case, we're not on­ly rolling out for na­tion­al bod­ies but for sport-serv­ing bod­ies. So let us say you and your part­ners at your com­mu­ni­ty say let's go out on the field and play a match, that is not the type of sport that we're try­ing to en­cour­age at this time be­cause we can't con­trol whether or not you're vac­ci­nat­ed.

We can't con­trol how many spec­ta­tors are go­ing to gath­er, hence why the reg­u­la­tions speak to hav­ing cer­tain fa­cil­i­ties as safe zones.

For in­stance, the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, en­closed ar­eas or ar­eas that can be cor­doned off to al­low the ad­min­is­tra­tor or the man­ag­er of the tour­na­ment etc, to be able to man­age and con­trol who is be­ing al­lowed to gath­er.

For in­stance, in­door events be­ing held, we have a ca­pac­i­ty of 25 per­cent of the fa­cil­i­ty, and for out­door, we have a lim­it of 50 per­cent of the fa­cil­i­ty's ca­pac­i­ty."

On­ly yes­ter­day, reg­u­la­tions for the re­turn of sports in safe zones were is­sued. The reg­u­la­tions will run un­til March when a de­ci­sion will be made on whether to stop the re­turn of sport, con­tin­ue it or ex­pand it by adding more fea­tures.

Cud­joe quizzed on whether the reg­u­la­tions will re­fer to schools, said a de­ci­sion has not yet been made for ex­emp­tions for school chil­dren: "Schools sports is man­aged by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, they have their own set-up to do that but as it re­lates to these reg­u­la­tions, it is for vac­ci­nat­ed ath­letes. So I think it would car­ry the school-aged chil­dren who are vac­ci­nat­ed. It is for vac­ci­nat­ed ath­letes, of­fi­cials spec­ta­tors and so on. At this point in time, we haven't list­ed the ex­emp­tion on school chil­dren who are not vac­ci­nat­ed to par­tic­i­pate at this time."