Prisons FC dominates TTSL awards

The Prison of­fi­cers were award­ed for win­ning the pres­ti­gious League Tro­phy in the scaled-down one-round com­pe­ti­tion last year, in what will po­ten­tial­ly be the last Su­per League tour­na­ment to be held. The T&T Su­per League will now give way for the com­ing Tier 1 and 2 League which is still to be giv­en a name.

Kei­th Look Loy, pres­i­dent of the TTSL made this an­nounce­ment in front of a small crowd that com­prised ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 out of the 13 par­tic­i­pat­ing teams. Pris­ons al­so re­ceived the Best Goal­keep­er award, cour­tesy the hero­ics of Javon Bourne, and the Gold­en Boots prize that was won by strik­er Nathan Julien.

The Prison of­fi­cers were set to walk away with a min­i­mum of $31,500, an amount that could on­ly change de­pen­dant on the fig­ure giv­en for trav­el.

Look Loy, at the be­gin­ning of the sea­son, said from the $200,000 giv­en in spon­sor­ship, the clubs would share $100,000 among them for prizes, leav­ing the last-place team to re­ceive $1,100, all the way up to the win­ning prize of $14,000 with tro­phies and medals.

There were al­so to be cash bonus­es of $1,000 for a win and $500 for a draw. Teams were al­so to be paid for their trav­el to and from match­es, in the sum of $800 and $1, 500.

How­ev­er, Bethel Unit­ed strik­er Tee­jay Cadiz was vot­ed the Most Valu­able Play­er (MVP), a de­ci­sion that was made eas­i­er af­ter Cadiz was ad­judged the best play­er in nine of his team's 12 match­es.

But de­spite be­ing ready to col­lect, clubs still could not col­lect their cash in­cen­tives as cheques made out in their names need­ed a third sig­na­ture from the TTSL, Look Loy ex­plained.

The TTSL boss al­so made it clear that bonus­es, trav­el and oth­er cash in­cen­tives will on­ly be paid out to clubs when doc­u­ments or pa­per­work is pro­vid­ed.

Ter­minix own­er and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Richard Fer­gu­son de­scribed the Su­per League as the best-run foot­ball tour­na­ment in T&T, say­ing it was a plea­sure to sup­port it fi­nan­cial­ly.

"It shows trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, it has the best foot­ball and most im­por­tant­ly, the biggest crowds. The T&T Pro League has noth­ing on the Su­per League," Fer­gu­son said.

The La Hor­quet­ta Rangers boss, who has been a fi­nan­cial pil­lar of the sports lo­cal­ly, called for Look Loy's style of man­age­ment in the TTSL, to be trans­ferred to the new foot­ball tour­na­ments in the fu­ture.