The 2022 edi­tion of the Tiger Tanks Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball league (SS­FL) sea­son is over and St Bene­dict's Col­lege was de­served­ly crowned, cham­pi­ons af­ter they de­feat­ed an in­spired Fa­ti­ma Col­lege by three goals to one in the fi­nal last Wednes­day (Oc­to­ber 26).

The fi­nal was wit­nessed by a large crowd de­spite the strange de­ci­sion of the SS­FL man­age­ment to play the game on a Wednes­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va which, in nor­mal cir­cum­stances, is a night­mare for com­muters head­ing south af­ter a work­ing day. It was even worse with all the traf­fic go­ing in­to Cou­va. Nev­er­the­less, that did not de­ter the sup­port­ers, par­ents, friends, school­mates, past stu­dents of ei­ther of these schools; and even fans who just want­ed to be there, from at­tend­ing the game.

For me, the two best schools got to the fi­nal. I had pre­dict­ed from very ear­ly on that it would have been a St Bene­dict’s ver­sus Fa­ti­ma fi­nal with “Bene­dict’s” hold­ing a slight ad­van­tage. This year, be­cause of time con­straints, the league was split in­to two groups with the win­ner and run­ner-up of Group A fac­ing the win­ner and run­ner-up in Group B in the se­mi-fi­nals. Then, the win­ners square off in the grand fi­nal.

It was prob­a­bly the fairest way to split up the groups by look­ing back on how they fin­ished in 2019 and all the odd num­bers from one to 15 in a group and all the even num­bers from two to 16 in the oth­er group. The last two in each group would be rel­e­gat­ed and a play­off be­tween the sec­ond to last teams would be the third team to go down.

I would ex­pect that next year, the SS­FL would re­vert to one league with 16 teams meet­ing one an­oth­er to de­ter­mine the cham­pi­ons. It would be great, how­ev­er, if at the end of the sea­son, they could make way for some sort of big four tour­na­ments. The win­ners and run­ners-up in the league meet­ing the win­ners and run­ners-up in the In­ter­col and if it is the same teams, then look at the se­mi-fi­nal­ists or the teams fin­ish­ing third and fourth. That be­ing said, the lev­el of in­ter­est cre­at­ed by the fi­nal this year was as­ton­ish­ing.

Let's look back at the high­ly suc­cess­ful league sea­son. First­ly, com­pli­ments to the spon­sors es­pe­cial­ly the ma­jor spon­sor: Tiger Tanks. It is al­ways great to see a spon­sor putting their mon­ey where their mouth is and try­ing to work the spon­sor­ship. They showed a keen in­ter­est in the run­ning of the league and al­ways had sug­ges­tions in try­ing to im­prove it. That is what spon­sor­ship is all about - work­ing with the or­gan­i­sa­tion rather than just putting in your mon­ey and sit­ting back. Let us hope more spon­sors come on board for 2023.

St Bene­dict’s was eas­i­ly the best team. Of­fen­sive­ly, they are dy­na­mite from their cap­tain Tarik Lee to star play­ers like Dar­rel Gar­cia, Je­re­mi­ah Niles, Josi­ah Ochoa and Nicholas Bob­come. They are all com­fort­able and quick with the ball at their feet. If, how­ev­er, you put them un­der pres­sure, they can make mis­takes at the back but teams are wor­ried to go at them and leave them­selves ex­posed in de­fence. They are go­ing to be dif­fi­cult to beat in the In­ter­col once they don't be­come com­pla­cent.

Fa­ti­ma is a good all-round team with an ex­cel­lent keep­er in Tris­tan Ed­wards. They are sol­id de­fen­sive­ly but played too cau­tious­ly against St Bene­dict’s and did not turn over from de­fence in­to at­tack quick­ly enough to cause the La Ro­maine boys any sig­nif­i­cant con­cern. They have some good in­di­vid­ual play­ers and should do well in the In­ter­col once, like St Bene­dict’s, they don’t be­come com­pla­cent.

San Juan North Sec­ondary is a good team and on their day can turn the ta­bles on the big two. In Lar­ry Noel, they have a marks­man ex­tra­or­di­naire. He scores goals when you least ex­pect them and, to­geth­er with Lin­dell Sween, re­mains the back­bone of the team. But the oth­er play­ers will have to step up for In­ter­col and make their pres­ence felt or the oth­er teams may well tar­get their two main play­ers and that may hurt San Juan.

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege (San Fer­nan­do) was not as strong this year as in pre­vi­ous years but what they lack in tal­ent, they make up for in terms of their struc­ture and or­gan­i­sa­tion. They are well-coached and on their day, can spring a sur­prise but they will have to work hard to de­feat St Bene­dict’s if they meet in the In­ter­col. Miss­ing their best play­er, Caleb Boyce, through in­jury has left a huge gap in their team.

Na­pari­ma Col­lege is al­so a good team but gave the cham­pi­ons too much re­spect and even when they were 1-0 down, they still adopt­ed a cau­tious ap­proach know­ing they need­ed vic­to­ry. They al­so pos­sess some good in­di­vid­ual play­ers and will have to be a lit­tle more ad­ven­tur­ous if they are to go deep in­to the In­ter­col com­pe­ti­tion.

To be bru­tal­ly hon­est, the five afore­men­tioned teams are head and shoul­ders above the oth­er teams in the league and that is ex­treme­ly wor­ry­ing. In group A, Trin­i­ty Col­lege East looked the best of the rest with Ja­heim Faustin up front who, if giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties, could give de­fend­ers prob­lems. De­fen­sive­ly, they looked sol­id and lost three games by a 1-0 mar­gin. They could be a dark horse for the In­ter­col.

QRC and Mal­ick Sec­ondary were large­ly dis­ap­point­ing. QRC leaked as many goals as they scored and in Ay­don Caruth, they have a good play­er, but their prob­lems stem from a leaky de­fence and they will con­cede against the bet­ter teams un­less they come up with a dif­fer­ent sys­tem. Mal­ick was in­con­sis­tent; they played well for long pe­ri­ods against the more at­trac­tive teams but ev­i­dent­ly could not sus­tain play­ing at a high lev­el through­out the 90 min­utes.

Ch­agua­nas North, East Mu­cu­rapo and Moru­ga left a lot to be de­sired. They were com­plete­ly out­played and will have to look at their de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes if they want to com­pete at the pre­mier­ship lev­el.

In Group A, two of the biggest let downs were St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary and St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege - two schools with a re­mark­able foot­balling his­to­ry. St Au­gus­tine will have to put a prop­er plan in place if they are to re­turn while St An­tho­ny’s has some tal­ent­ed play­ers but seem to lack self-be­lief. Both schools are far too deep in tra­di­tion to fall to the depths of just a school mak­ing up num­bers in a com­pe­ti­tion.

Across in the sis­ter-isle, Spey­side Sec­ondary start­ed well but fad­ed away. I have al­ways said that go­ing to To­ba­go to play is al­ways dif­fi­cult but the To­ba­go sys­tem needs to be re­vamped and the play­ers need to be coached bet­ter in all as­pects of the game es­pe­cial­ly to un­der­stand their roles on the field. Cara­pichaima East was not in the same league as the top sides and Pleas­antville was slight­ly bet­ter but a lot more work has to go in­to de­vel­op­ing the younger play­ers if these schools are to com­pete in the pre­mier­ship di­vi­sion.

The In­ter­col pre­lim­i­nar­ies start­ed on Tues­day and as usu­al, it is go­ing to be an ex­cit­ing tour­na­ment and a dark horse al­ways seems to up­set the fan­cied teams. Let's wait and see if we will get a sur­prise in this year's tour­na­ment. Good luck to all schools!

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