Coaches support changes for schoolboy football

There is strong support among Manning Cup and daCosta Cup teams for a new seeding system that excludes top-ranked schools from the first round.

Under the new format, traditional schools such as defending champions Excelsior High, Jamaica College, Kingston College, Wolmer’s Boys’, St George’s College, Calabar High, and St Andrew Technical High School, among others, will forego the Manning Cup’s initial stage.

For the rural-area daCosta Cup competition, the same applies to defending champions St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS), and traditional big hitters Glenmuir High, Clarendon College, Cornwall College, Manning’s High, Rusea’s High, Manchester High and other highly-ranked teams.

Several schools have welcomed the change made by the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Associations, which governs high-school sport competitions.

Included among schools supporting the change are Papine High, who are not seeded.

Papine High School are not traditionally a major player in the Manning Cup competition, but their coach, Michael Blygen, supports the adjustments.

“It gives the weaker team a chance to go through the round. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but these teams get a better chance to go through the round,” said Blygen.

“The teams that will go through the first round will be the better teams of the weaker teams. So you will eliminate a team that will get 20-love and 30-love and those joke scores,” he said.

“So it’s a good move in my eye and the stronger out of the weaker teams will move on.”

He noted that many of the lower ranked teams look forward to matching up against the big teams, but it is better to prove their worth before taking on the giants.

“They will eventually get to matchup against those teams … but in the beginning you give weaker teams an opportunity and the better teams will to go through.”

Omar ‘Rambo’ Wedderburn, the head coach of STETHS, believes the new format will add much-needed ‘spice’.

“Changes are good … at some point we are going to try something new. The competition needs some spice, and you have to think about it in different ways,” he said.

“If you are a good team or you are a team that plans to stay in the competition, you have to plan to play every game,” he said. “So it doesn’t really matter about the format. It’s what you plan to do.

“I am not worried. STETHS over the years are a slow-starting team. So we had to flex our preparation,” shared Wedderburn. “So it has a lot to do with us as the coaches and how we can adapt to changes.”

Kemar Ricketts, formerly of Munro College and now at Calabar, thinks the changes will be positive for sponsors and competitiveness.

“The alterations have been good alterations, speaking from a corporate standpoint. It is needed. It is good competition. You just have to get your feet grounded early and get going,” he opined.

“The only drawback is the reduced games. If we look at it from a development standpoint, it can really help. In the normal format, you would play more games, home and away games. Now you are straight into the knockout competitions, and if you get to the semifinals (KOs), you are into the Champions Cup,” Ricketts continued.

“Then you go back to the Manning Cup. It’s just that you are playing a little fewer games, but it’s good for the competition, good for the sponsors, and I’m into it,” he commented.

Excited at knockout format

Both coaches are also excited about the Walker Cup and Ben Francis Cup knockout competitions being restored to their original format, where all the teams get a chance to compete.

Ricketts said: “It’s a good way forward. Before you could only win three trophies. Now it gives you the chance to take home all (four) trophies and see who is king of the jungle.”

In the previous format, only the eight losing schools from the Manning Cup and daCosta Cup’s Round of 16 played in the knockouts.