St Bene­dict’s Col­lege will have un­til the close of busi­ness on Fri­day to lodge their ap­peal against the rul­ing by the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee to strip them 12 points and eight goals which the school ac­cu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing its 2024 SS­FL Pre­mier Di­vi­sion cam­paign.

De­spite reach­ing out to the school for a com­ment on the mat­ter with­out luck, Guardian Me­dia Sports has been in­formed that St Bene­dict’s Col­lege will ap­peal the de­ci­sion that was hand­ed down on De­cem­ber 30, 2024. 

The Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of  Adesh Dwari­ka (Chair­man), Lau­rance Seep­er­sad and Kurt Har­ry (mem­bers) heard from the school through its Prin­ci­pal Gre­go­ry Quan Kep and the school’s at­tor­ney Christophe Brath­waite dur­ing the com­mit­tee’s de­lib­er­a­tions abut the im­prop­er use of strik­er Der­rel Gar­cia, who left the school sys­tem for more than a year and was fil­tered back in­to it in Oc­to­ber with­out the knowl­edge of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and played match­es.  

How­ev­er, the rul­ing was heav­i­ly based on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, which in­clud­ed doc­u­ments de­tail­ing Gar­cia’s arrange­ments to trav­el to Spain for a tri­al with a foot­ball acad­e­my from Au­gust 2023 to May 2024 and in the process he missed the en­tire Form 3 school year.

Ac­cord­ing to the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee re­port – “St. Bene­dict’s Col­lege has been pe­nalised all points for the un­der­men­tioned games and three (3) points and three (3) goals be award­ed to the re­spec­tive schools/teams.”  

The match­es are against San Juan North Sec­ondary which the South­ern­ers won 1-0; Fa­ti­ma Col­lege they won 3-1; St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege which led to a 2-1 tri­umph for the South­ern­ers and against Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) they pre­vailed in 2-1, all in Oc­to­ber. 

The rul­ing meant that with the de­duc­tion of points and goals, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege dropped from first in the league to fourth in the 16-team stand­ing with 29 points, while Fa­ti­ma Col­lege was as­cend­ed from the sec­ond-place team to the top po­si­tion with 38 points which means that they are the 2024 league cham­pi­on school. 

SS­FL pres­i­dent Merere Gon­za­les said – “We had to al­low St Bene­dict’s Col­lege the op­por­tu­ni­ty to avail them­selves of the ini­tial in­for­ma­tion and some time to di­gest it and sub­se­quent to that, we will re­lease the same in­for­ma­tion to all the oth­er stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the me­dia.”  

Con­cern­ing the lengthy time it took to ar­rive at the de­ci­sion, Gon­za­les, a for­mer ref­er­ee, ex­plained, “I would like to sin­cere­ly apol­o­gise to the pub­lic for the lengthy de­lay in deal­ing with and ar­riv­ing at a de­ci­sion, even though, it is still open for  a school to ap­peal if they deem nec­es­sary which is go­ing to be by Fri­day for the dead­line.” 

“In  the con­text of it be­ing a night­mar­ish as­pect as it has nev­er re­al­ly hap­pened in the SS­FL be­fore, and in­ter­est­ing­ly enough, when we speak about our 60th an­niver­sary and things to re­mem­ber, we would al­so re­mem­ber this.”  

“I was very con­cerned with the lengthy de­lay, but I un­der­stood as we went through the pe­ri­od that al­low­ing due process to un­fold be­cause there were sev­er­al fac­tors that caused the de­lay. And even at the point in time of re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion and then get­ting ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion sub­se­quent­ly, which meant both the lawyer and the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee met a lit­tle more than they should have met.” 

“As far as all the in­fo that is be­fore us, I am of the strong feel­ing that yes it was well con­veyed and ven­ti­lat­ed to all to un­der­stand,” Gon­za­les ex­plained fur­ther.   

Mean­while, Hut­son Charles the Fa­ti­ma Col­lege for­mer coach was elat­ed for his play­ers, say­ing they worked hard and they de­serve it.

He said, “To me I think all the hard work that we put in, the goals that we set for the year, and now hear­ing that we won the League is a great achieve­ment be­cause our goal was to win four tro­phies this year, start­ing with the open­ing game and end­ing with the In­ter­col, how­ev­er, we fell short by one, but we won three so ku­dos to the young boys be­cause they worked hard.  We didn’t have a big squad but the guys dug deep and they achieved.” 

Though be­ing re­lieved of his job at the end of the sea­son, Charles guid­ed the Mu­cu­rapo Road boys to the open­ing NGC Cup, the North Zone In­ter­col ti­tle and the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion crown to closed which is ar­guable a suc­cess­ful sea­son.