Gateway Athletics director Adrian Romain confirmed today that the grand winners of the Republic Cup Youth Football Tournament will walk away with TT$3,000 each. The competition, which will be run in a seven-a-side format, has five categories: Boys 17-19, Girls 17-19, Boys Under-16, Girls Under-16 and Boys Under-14. The overall …
Read More »Form three St Benedict’s midfielder, Josiah Ochoa, wins SSFL Ball Juggling competition
St Benedict’s College midfielder Josiah Ochoa is the Secondary Schools Football League’s first trophy-holder in close to three years, after the 15-year-old form three student won the SSFL Online Ball Juggling Competition earlier this month. Ochoa emerged best of a field of 10 participants to cop the award. Nine entrants …
Read More »Gonzales: Vaccine hesitancy torpedoed 2021 SSFL season; Jamaica student athletes all vaccinated
Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) president Merere Gonzales has suggested that vaccine hesitancy among Trinidad and Tobago’s student population could be a key factor in the Government’s decision to block schools football for the second successive season. Gonzales said the SSFL executive had been in communication with the ministries of …
Read More »Best: QRC’s sporting troops pay tribute to Gervase Hannays, a fallen soldier
It was in primary school that we were introduced to Charles Wolfe’s ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore’. Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note/As his corpse to the rampart we hurried./Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot/O’er the grave where our hero we buried. Those lines came …
Read More »Barney’s bible: Fixing T&T football—standard curriculum, ‘shadow teams’ and new SSFL age group
Leave the egos at the door and instead bring bags and bags of patience. Fixing our football will require much more time than it took to drive it down to its current position. For too long, we have attempted to hold conversations in which each leader tried to look like …
Read More »Barney’s bible: The SSFL’s backward rule change; and what Yorke and Jordan did that our youths abandoned
So far I have only touched on youth development from a ball manipulation and decision-making viewpoint. However, playing in competitive games non-stop can also hinder the physical development and health of players. Again, the local adage that ‘the more you play, the better you get’ is misleading on this count. …
Read More »Barney’s bible: ‘The more games you play, the better you get’ fallacy leaves T&T players underdeveloped
Youth development in Trinidad, simply put, consists of tournaments and competitions. The Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL), Youth Pro League (YPL), Republic Bank Youth League, Next Level U-19 Tournament and Commissioner’s Cup are the main players in this arena. I will use the SSFL as the starting point of the …
Read More »Barney’s bible: Does T&T player development follow best practices? Are our youth competitions helping or hurting?
A question on The Burdie and Barney podcast during our discussion with former England Premier League and 2006 World Cup goalkeeper Shaka Hislop lingered long after that episode was over: Have we been developing players? Or were we just blessed with talented players previously and, now, not so much? At …
Read More »Former World Cup assistant referee and lay minister, Gonzales, elected SSFL president
Former 1998 Fifa World Cup assistant referee Merere Louis Gonzales, a retired teacher at Success RC and Mt Hope Secondary and a lay minister at the Maloney, D’Abadie and Mausica RC churches, is the new Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) president, following a resounding win in the SSFL’s virtual annual …
Read More »Dear Editor: Covid-19 regulations unfairly and disproportionately affecting youth athletes
“[…] In primary schools, it is 2,475 from 4,960 students or 49.8% [who are inactive due to Covid-19 regulations], while it is 2,838 from 4,750 students in secondary schools or 60%. That means a combined total of 5,313 from 9,710 students in Tobago, or 58%. “If Trinidad and Tobago had …
Read More »‘Fenwick is misleading the public!’ Eve knocks T&T coach for supposedly disrespectful, contradictory statements
Club Sando FC head coach and former Soca Warriors stand-out Angus Eve has accused Trinidad and Tobago Men’s National Senior Team head coach Terry Fenwick of misleading local football fans on several issues—not least regarding the Warriors’ supposed 5-0 win over Sando, earlier this month. On 23 January, Fenwick posted …
Read More »Coaches association meets SSFL coaches, TTSL and WoLF next
The following is a press statement from the National Football Coaches of Trinidad and Tobago (NFCTT): The National Football Coaches of Trinidad and Tobago (NFCTT) continued its town hall-styled meetings on Saturday 28th November 2020. The guests of this meeting were the Secondary School Football League (SSFL) Premier Division coaches. …
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