… Berbice, Essequibo & East Coast targeted
WITH exactly one week to go before registration closes and as the organisers seek to educate the football public of their inaugural tournament called FastBall, which is sponsored by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T), awareness games are planned for this Sunday at various venues across Guyana.
Last weekend’s matches were a success, with Pele Football Club emerging as the champs from the three matches which were played at the Georgetown Football Club (GFC) ground, while one game was played at the Mackenzie Sports Club (MSC) ground in Linden. With more matches scheduled for the mining town, including the opening encounter which will officially kick off the tournament, the attention will shift to the Skeldon Community Centre ground in Berbice, the Anna Regina Community Centre ground in Essequibo and on the East Coast of Demerara the BV ground where matches will all start at 15:00hrs.
The teams scheduled for the Skeldon Ground are Corriverton United, Rose Hall Town United, Liverpool, Cougars, Rosignol United and Courtlanders while in Essequibo, teams from Dartmouth, Henrietta, Queenstown, Charity, Supenaam and Richmond will collide.
At the BV ground on the East Coast of Demerara, BV/Triumph United, Bakewell Buxton Stars, Ann’s Grove, Golden Grove, Victoria Kings and Mahaica will be testing their skills and knowledge of FastBall.
Among the innovative rules which have been introduced to make the knock-out format more thrilling, including ‘no offside’ rule, games are of 30 minutes’ duration divided into two equal periods. In the 12th minute a blue ball will be introduced and any goal scored with the blue ball will be doubled.
Only 13 players (11 on field) can be used on game day with running changes available. Two strategic timeouts of 60 seconds each are available to teams in each half (but will not roll over to the second half if not utilised) and if a game ends in a tie, sudden death penalty kicks will be used to determine the winner, with the opposing team captain selecting the kicker for each kick.
The next throw off will attract a six-seconds penalty kick which will be taken from the arc at the top of the box. Opposing teams will be awarded penalty kicks after an accumulation of five fouls. Spectators can look forward to lots of giveaways and novelty games at the various venues with Kirk ‘Blue Maxx’ Jardine in attendance.