It will be foot­ball in Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary, or pos­si­bly March of 2022 for stu­dent-ath­letes of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) wish­ing to play in the 2021 sea­son.

Pres­i­dent of the SS­FL Merere Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Tues­day that the league has been toy­ing with sev­er­al op­tions to have ac­tion this year, and one is to be­gin late in No­vem­ber which would mean that it will run in­to Jan­u­ary or Feb­ru­ary 2022 if it is to be com­plet­ed, in­clu­sive of hav­ing both League and In­ter­Col tour­na­ments.

Like most oth­er sports in T&T, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has dished out a red card for the SS­FL and has se­vere­ly af­fect­ed many stu­dents last year, in their fi­nal year at schools pur­su­ing ath­let­ic schol­ar­ships.

"We were of the firm be­lief ear­li­er in the year, that we were look­ing at the fea­si­bil­i­ty and pos­si­bil­i­ty of start­ing some­thing work­able in Sep­tem­ber, how­ev­er, the re­al­i­ty is that it is not the case.

"The sec­ond plan was to have a trun­cat­ed sea­son to start in the sec­ond or third week in Oc­to­ber, and that would have been based on the re­cent state­ments made by the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, re - the vac­ci­na­tion of stu­dents and the pas­sion re­open­ing of school face-to-face.

"That in it­self was af­fect­ed by the sit­u­a­tion present­ly, so we're still look­ing for­ward to the pos­si­bil­i­ty to start some­thing work­able and fea­si­ble and op­er­a­tional in late Oc­to­ber or the pos­si­bil­i­ty of No­vem­ber. But we would give our­selves be­tween now and pos­si­bly the mid­dle of Oc­to­ber to make a de­c­la­ra­tion to in­di­cate whether or not, we can have a sea­son for 2021 or not."

He not­ed al­so: "There is al­so an­oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty that if we were to maybe start late in No­vem­ber in or­der to com­plete the League which will now di­vide it­self in­to two groups of eight teams, see­ing that there are 16 teams in­volved, and al­so more im­por­tant­ly, that the schools through the prin­ci­pals will be still in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing, then we can see our­selves if we start late in No­vem­ber, then it can very well move in­to 2022 in Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary at which we will have the League and the In­ter­col.

"So we're hav­ing these op­tions avail­able but it is now based on the sanc­tion­ing, the per­mis­sion and the di­rec­tive to be giv­en by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and in this case the Min­istry of Health in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion," Gon­za­les ex­plained.

An­oth­er op­tion Gon­za­les, a for­mer teacher and FI­FA World Cup ref­er­ee said was to have an on­line skills chal­lenge, which would not cater for all the stu­dent-ath­letes.

Dis­cus­sions for this chal­lenge have been on­go­ing as well as a fut­sal com­pe­ti­tion for all di­vi­sions, the SS­FL boss ex­plained: "In spite of that, we are hav­ing, at this present mo­ment, plan­ning for the on­line skills com­pe­ti­tion or show­down, which will cater for the di­vi­sions of the low­er lev­els in the SS­FL, which means it will be for the Forms One, Un­der-13s to the Se­nior Di­vi­sion, ex­clu­sive of the Cham­pi­onship and the Pre­mier Di­vi­sions, which we would pre­fer to have phys­i­cal­ly and on the field, pri­mar­i­ly be­cause we feel that pro­vid­ing a plat­form for the el­der ones, forms five and six, are the ones who are in the present po­si­tion to pur­sue, if they so de­sire, schol­ar­ships ei­ther lo­cal at UTT or re­gion­al and or in­ter­na­tion­al Col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties abroad."

"If we are un­able to have any sea­son what­so­ev­er, we will def­i­nite­ly have the on­line skills com­pe­ti­tion for all the di­vi­sions, in­clu­sive of the cham­pi­onship and the pre­mier­ship di­vi­sions.

"What we un­der­stand is that it is bet­ter to have some­thing tan­gi­ble, con­crete or ev­i­denced of be­ing in­volved in some­thing per­tain­ing to the par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline and in this case foot­ball, rather than have noth­ing.

"For in­stance, last year 2020 would have been the last sea­son for some of the oth­er stu­dent-ath­letes who, for no fault of theirs, we un­able to have a sea­son so what we had to do in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, was to have let­ters pre­pared for these re­spec­tive stu­dents to sup­port their case for those who wished at that point in time, to pur­sue schol­ar­ships, and that was done and sev­er­al of them had been suc­cess­ful."