Coach of the 2015 Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) runners-up St Benedict’s, Dexter Cyrus, has called on tournament organisers to reintroduce local trophies such as the ‘Big Four’ in an effort to keep the students motivated to give their utmost throughout the entire season.
“I think the ‘winner-takes-all’ in schools football is really poor and outdated,” said Cyrus on Thursday. “There should be some form of a ‘Big Four’ or a ‘Big Six’ because what you find happening is that the teams that cannot win or get relegated from the league tend to exhale coming to the end.”
He added: “It is difficult to motivate kids to play to their last ounce of energy if they know that they cannot win. For them, there is nothing like a ‘Big Four’ title or anything else to fall back on or play for. The kids now become very difficult to manage in those games because mentally they lose focus with nothing to play for.” Two years ago, the League was contested by five Zones—North, East, Central, South and Tobago.
However, since 2014, a 14-team Premier Division format was introduced by the SSFL executive.
Now, the League comprises of the top four teams from the North, East and South Zones as well as the top two teams from the Central Zone. There is also a demotion and promotion battle with the bottom two school teams dropping into the lower Championship Division, while the winners and runners-up of the Championship are then promoted to the Premier Division for the following season.
Cyrus and his managerial team of Ravi Ramgoolam and Nolan Bernard have all shifted focus though to next week’s knockout tourney, the Coca Cola Intercol.
As far as for preparations, Cyrus admitted that his team is presently in great physical form with Taryl Coutou captaining the squad.
“Intercol at this level is more mental preparation than anything else. You need to get the boys to understand that they need to play every game like a final and that’s mental. Once I get their heads in the right place, I think we should do well. Their mentality has changed over the past two seasons. St Benedict’s College has a wining mentality and they don’t play as though any team is better than them. They believe they can beat any team and that’s how they approach every game,” he declared.
Additionally, the ‘Southern Lions’ were one of the few teams this year to once again miss out on use of their original home ground (The Commons). They played home games at Mahaica Oval in Point Fortin.
“Playing at Mahaica Oval was not a problem for us and we were pretty comfortable as the boys adapted quickly. But, we have been given the assurance that it (Commons) would be completed next year and we should be back to our original home turf in 2016.
The boys settled down a bit late (this year), much later than last season. I think that is attributed to the fact that we lost our top two goal scorers in the form of Moriba Descartes and Anthony Herbert; we also lost our first choice goalkeeper, Jamari Warrick, who was the best goalie in the league last year; so we lost three top players.
However, the boys adapted well to the pre-season training and we were able to get in a seven-game unbeaten streak, and that contributed greatly to us coming in second place,” Cyrus concluded.
17