Only two women players from Tobago are participating in the inaugural Women's Premier League (WPL).
They are; prolific goal scorer for the National team, Kennya ‘Ya Ya’ Cordner and Kimica Forbes. Both are playing for Wave FC, one of the six franchises in the League and went as franchise players during the draft. Efforts by Tobago News to find out the reason why Kimika’s sister Karyn was not in the draft, proved futile up to press time.
Competition kicked off on Thursday at the St James Barracks with a double header featuring Dragons and Fuego and Wave and Angels.
While the majority of players are from Trinidad there are about thirty foreign players from the Caribbean, Brazil, Great Britain, Canada and the United States Virgin Islands and the USA in the cast.
The League is an initiative of Minister of Sport, Brent Sancho and SPROTT via the Ministry of Sport is the platinum sponsor, but business entities like Shanghai Construction Group, Caribbean Airlines, The Chancellor Hotel, Bankers Insurance Ltd, Blue Waters and Digicel are also on board.
Tobago News spoke to Corbin Cooper, who coaches Atomic Chicas Women Football team and is one of the most committed women coach on the island on the launch of the League.
Corbin said that while the League was a positive step for women football in T&T, he is very disappointed that only two Tobago players are in the franchises and Tobago was not given a franchise. He said that a franchise for Tobago would have assisted in fast forwarding the development of the women’s programme on the island.
Cooper said that he was the lone voice on the island trying to get a franchise for Tobago, but his efforts were in vain.
Cooper said that he was in contact with Minister Sancho and a screening session was supposed to be conducted in Tobago, but that fell through. He was later told to send five players for screening but that too failed to materialise.
Tobago News made numerous efforts over the last two weeks to contact Minister Sancho for a comment on the situation but was unsuccessful.