AT a simple ceremony held in the boardroom of tournament sponsors National Milling Company (NAMILCO), executives of both NAMILCO and Fruta Conquerors attached their signatures to the contracts for the smooth running of this year’s fourth NAMILCO/Fruta Conquerors Football Festival.

Managing Director of NAMILCO Bert Sukhai lauded the executives of the organizing club for the developments that took place at the venue (Tucville playfield) as well as around the community, but calls for a more prestigious tournament this time around, which is being sponsored to the tune of $2m.

“We have seen the developments taking place over the years, such as the improvement being carried out on the Tucville ground. But we would like to see that this tournament carries more prestige, with more stakeholders buying into it so it can grow.

A greater number of fans at each match, controversies and other unsavory activities, competitive but friendly games are some of the things we would like to see happen, which in turn can bring in more money to Fruta Conquerors towards the improvement of the game of football,” stated Sukhai.

Sukhai outlined some of the donations his company has been involved in, including charitable donations, sponsorship of a number of sports including the annual CARICOM Day cycle road race, while they recently provided the Guyana Netball Association with equipment.

“In addition to reaching out to you while you enjoying your bread, roti and bake with Wheat-Up porridge on a Sunday morning before going to play a game of football, we also reach out to you in various forms of sport.

At NAMILCO, we have an ISO mandate to ensure our customers and consumers of flour are always satisfied and this cannot be achieved by giving them quality products alone, but also letting them be aware of the fact that when they consume our products, part of the price they pay goes back to enhancing sports in Guyana.”

He lauded the executive body of Fruta Conquerors which is being led by its president Marlon Cole, to continue the hard work in making the tournament a success, as they seek to help in some way or the other, take youths off the streets and make them better citizens.

Like his vice president and secretary respectively in former national hockey player Ivor Thompson and Lavern Fraser before him, Cole outlined the holistic development that is taking place at the Tucville ground as a testament to the timely and tangible support of NAMILCO.

“Our tournament is the only one that generates funds from and for the sport of football in Guyana and we are proud to say so.

When we look at the number of youths who turn out at the Tucville ground each and every afternoon, we ask ourselves why we are doing this. But then we remember our motto “With Togetherness and Dedication we conquer” and that motivates us to keep going,” stated Cole.

He further outlined the rules and regulations for the tournament which has attracted 15 of the top teams in the country, with two more teams playing a qualifying match to decide the 16th team to compete in the tournament that will be played on a knock out basis.

Attractive prizes will be up for grabs, with the winner pocketing $500,000, leaving the second, third and fourth placed teams to be content with $200,000, $100,000 and $50,000 respectively, while two young promising players will be rewarded with Computer Scholarships courtesy of Global Technology.

Two J’s General Store of Regent will sponsor the Most Valuable Player (MVP) prize as they have been doing  for the past three years, even as Swansea Telecommunications and Junior’s Jewellery will take care of the best goalkeeper and highest goal scorer prizes respectively.

The 15 teams who will be joined by the winner of the Grove Hi-Tech/New Amsterdam United matchup are BK International Western Tigers, Pele, Santos, GDF, Alpha United, Monedderlust, Victoria Kings, Riddim Squad, Buxton United, Seawall United, Sunburst Camptown, Bakewell Buxton Stars, Milerock and Fruta Conquerors.

The tournament that is slated to run from 23rd October to 13th November will kick off next Saturday, with Victoria Kings opposing Monedderlust from 18:00h and in the feature match, Santos and Pele will do battle from 20:00h.