The sum of $1.7 million was yesterday approved by Cabinet to kickstart the inaugural women’s professional football league, scheduled to begin in mid-June. This was revealed at the post-Cabinet briefing by Minister of Sport Brent Sancho. Sancho was appointed Minister of Sport in February and started the planning stages soon after. He said that the funds were to “assist in offsetting start-up expenditure as well as operational and administrative expenses.”
The league will feature six franchise teams and between 30-40 players from abroad, which he Sancho said will give the league “more substance and a higher level of play”. Sancho said the league’s hierarchy comprise members of the T&T Football Association, the Ministry of Sport and the Women’s League Football (Wolf), the latter of which is an existing amateur league for women. Wolf, in fact, is scheduled to kick off tomorrow, just over a month before inaugural women’s professional league.
The purpose, Sancho said, is to “fill the gap” of inactivity experienced by some national women’s team players following their narrow two-legged loss to Ecuador last year, which saw them miss out on qualification for this year’s Fifa Women’s World Cup on the final hurdle. Sancho said the league is also intended to give sport for women a “platform to take off from” and to “stimulate corporate T&T” to invest in sport. He said a broadcasting deal is currently being “worked on” to air the matches across the region.
Matches will be played on Fridays and Saturdays. Fridays will feature double-headers, while Saturdays fixtures, according to Sancho, will be community oriented and “tied into the Wolf matches”. “We will be playing in various community venues that we will be selected along the way. One of the things is that we want to have a community tie into a lot of these games.” The matches will be played on Fridays with double-headers and on Saturdays “(with) a community game to be tied into a Wolf Premier League game,” the former T&T World Cup defender said.
Franchises will have open try-outs this month. The Minister said certain teams may draft college players “depending on collegiate rules”.
“We know that there is an avenue for scholarships outside these shores... and stay within the parameters of the NCAA rules for America, for example, we will have one particular team designed for college players that play away in the USA, coming back to these shores, as well as hopefuls. To get (opportunities for) scholarships, (they) will play on one team so that they do not infringe on their collegiate rules that govern collegiate soccer in America,” Sancho said.