As it is with many of the in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball leagues around the world, there will be foot­ball dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son here in T&T. 

It’s a new ini­tia­tive of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) and the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, which was an­nounced at the launch of the TTPFL on Tues­day night at the North­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) Port-of-Spain. 

Jame­son Rigues, vice pres­i­dent of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, said the idea will en­sure that there is foot­ball all the way. 

Sea­son III of the TTPFL kicks off on De­cem­ber 6 and will go to May. De­spite the late start, there will be no break for the Christ­mas hol­i­days, as fans will in­stead be pre­sent­ed with a Box­ing Day af­fair fea­tur­ing a dou­ble­head­er at the Diego Mar­tin Sports Com­plex be­tween champs AC Port-of-Spain and Cen­tral FC at 5 pm, and De­fence Force and Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers at 7 pm in the oth­er game. 

Al­so on Box­ing Day will be an­oth­er dou­ble­head­er at the Ari­ma Velo­drome fea­tur­ing Cale­do­nia AIA and FC Phoenix at 5 pm and a clash with Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice and Pris­ons Ser­vice FC at 7 pm. 

Rigues al­so as­sured that for this sea­son of the TTPFL, there will be pro­mo­tion and de­mo­tion, though he could not say how many teams will be rel­e­gat­ed or pro­mot­ed. 

On Tues­day, sev­en of the 12 teams that will con­test Tier 1 of the TTPFL were giv­en their li­cense cer­tifi­cates from the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the TTPFL, Yale An­toine, with the as­sis­tance of Lystra Lara, a TTFA em­ploy­ee. 

Fol­low­ing greet­ings from the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Ka­reem Paul, and An­toine, Rigues re­vealed that sev­er­al changes from the stand­point of pro­mo­tion would whet the ap­petite of the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty and would en­able the league to be bet­ter man­aged. 

“Apart from the mar­ket­ing, we haven’t re­al­ly tak­en on the type of struc­ture in terms of the ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture that there was pri­or. One thing that they would have ben­e­fit­ted us by do­ing that was the cost that was car­ried pri­or, in terms of what we were pay­ing a CEO and so on. We kind of man­aged to elim­i­nate that and put oth­er things in place—bet­ter sup­port that would pro­pel the League in such a way that you would get more qual­i­ty in terms of the ad­min­is­tra­tion, so you would def­i­nite­ly see a dif­fer­ent se­quence of how things would hap­pen,” Rigues ex­plained. 

“You would see a dif­fer­ent way if I could use the term the ‘dress­ing of the league’ with the mar­ket­ing com­bined with the ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port that the teams are go­ing to get. Con­cern­ing mar­ket­ing, we have asked all our clubs to work to­geth­er with our mar­ket­ing team, so both com­ing to­geth­er will cer­tain­ly make it bet­ter. And they have been do­ing that so far in the build-up to the open­ing on De­cem­ber 6.” 

The League was ini­tial­ly sched­uled to kick off to­mor­row (No­vem­ber 22); how­ev­er, it faced a set­back of hav­ing to deal with pay­ments to sup­pli­ers such as Sports Max, Caribbean Air­lines, ref­er­ees, and oth­er of­fi­cials, etc. Rigues told Guardian Me­dia Sports that while dis­cus­sions were held to have an ear­li­er start to the League, the ex­ec­u­tive would have spent time go­ing back and look­ing at what was hap­pen­ing be­fore and what could hap­pen to make it bet­ter. 

Mean­while, the League will see the re­turn of San Juan Jabloteh, a house­hold name in lo­cal foot­ball who missed the last sea­son due to fi­nan­cial is­sues. Coach Mar­vin Gor­don said he was elat­ed to be back in the top-flight com­pe­ti­tion, for which he be­lieves he will give a good ac­count of them­selves. 

“I’m ex­cit­ed to be back, hap­py to be back. I think since I start­ed coach­ing in 2009, last sea­son was the first sea­son I did not coach at this lev­el. So I kind of stayed with the club; I coached at un­der-20 tour­na­ments for them, and here we’re back now; the play­ers are hap­py to be back with Jabloteh, and we’re look­ing for­ward to the sea­son. We have a new chair­man in Ni­rad Ti­warie, and I think he has been do­ing a fan­tas­tic job; some new board mem­bers as well, so things are look­ing up at San Juan Jabloteh,” Gor­don ex­plained. 

“We have a young squad still; we’re still a young squad be­tween 17 and 28 years old; the old­est play­er is 28, and that’s fan­tas­tic. We have some good names who are do­ing well now in the Col­lege’s League who are in the squad, and I look for­ward to see­ing them punch­ing to the high­est lev­el with these play­ers.” 

Quizzed on the names of some of his play­ers, Gor­don ex­cit­ed­ly said, “The one whose name is all over T&T right now, Der­rel ‘Zoom Zoom’ Gar­cia, An­dell Fras­er, Lin­dell Sween, Rus­sell Fran­cois, Jay­lon Matthews, Dwight Jor­don, Jokool Pierre, Joshua Lewis, Je­lani Pe­ters, and I have a kid who is on­ly 17 by the name of Mc­Shine; he plays right back, and I think you all will en­joy him. We want to try and come in the top three; I know it would be kind of dif­fi­cult, but I think we’re punch­ing for that, and in every game, try to be as com­pet­i­tive as pos­si­ble and try to go at them. We’re go­ing to play high-tem­po foot­ball,” Gor­don ex­plained. 

“We’re not go­ing to sit back; we’re go­ing to come at you; you have to beat us; let’s go punch­es for punch­es. I think I have youth on my side; I like to play ex­cit­ing foot­ball; I like to play at­trac­tive foot­ball, so we’re go­ing to keep the ball.”