THE Guyana Football Federation (GFF) has not given the green light for the staging of the third edition of the Banks/Georgetown Football Association (GFA) club tournament.

Chronicle Sport learnt yesterday via a telephone interview that the GFA is still to submit to the GFF, a signed commitment from beverage `giant’ Banks DIH Ltd, stating that they will honour their commitment to pay out all prizes and prize monies to the respective winners.
Speaking to Chronicle Sport, GFF’s president Christopher Matthias stated that the GFA, who made an application to stage the year-end tournament which ends on January 1, has submitted all other requirements, but is still to submit the most important one – that is the letter of commitment from the proposed sponsors.
“We don’t want to go back to the days when teams have to wait for months after a tournament is completed to receive their monetary rewards or otherwise,” Matthias stated, adding “we want to be transparent in whatever venture we undertake”.
According to Matthias, once the GFF gets the letter of commitment from Banks DIH, the coordinators will then have to lodge the levy fees before they are granted the green light to stage the multimillion dollars tournament which is expected to be the biggest football tournament in the history of the sport locally.
For months, the much anticipated tournament has been in limbo due to a request from the popular Kashif and Shanghai Organisation to stage the 24th edition of their year-end tournament. However, the new GFF executives implemented certain criteria that have to be met by any individual or organisation desirous of staging a football tournament.
According to the GFF boss, the Kashif and Shanghai Organisation has not done so to date, they were instructed to submit the relevant documents but failed to adhere.
Over the years, the Kashif and Shanghai Organisation has played an integral role in the development of the sport, but according to sources, they were adamant not to disclose the amount of sponsorship they received from their various sources.
This, according to the source, caused the new GFF executive committee to implement stringent requirements which they (Kashif and Shanghai) failed to adhere to.
The organisation had even planned to take legal action and even went to the extreme where they wrote CONCACAF seeking an intervention, but to date, no word has been forthcoming from CONCACAF. If word has been had from that Caribbean body, Chronicle Sport is unaware.
Instead of taking legal action, the Kashif and Shanghai Organisation has opted to stage an inter-school tournament which will involve 24 schools drawn from the Digicel Schools tournament and games would be played on the same dates that the Banks/GFA tournament will be contested.
Both tournaments will culminate on January 1, 2014.
A news report stated that the Kashif and Shanghai tournament will be labelled the Chico/Kashif and Shanghai Inter-School Football Tournament and will kick off during the first week of December.
Meanwhile, the Banks/DIH tournament will be launched next week. Thirty-two teams from around the country have stated their intention to participate.
Asked what are his thoughts on the Kashif and Shanghai Inter-School tournament, Matthias said, “anyone or any organisation that seeks to invest in schools is doing a tremendous good for the development of the sport.
“We (GFF), the Government, Banks DIH and a few other corporate sponsors are in the process of launching a `Grass Youth Programme’ that will target Under-11 to Under-17 players and this programme should be launched next month.”
He said matches will be played on Saturdays of each week.

(By Michael DaSilva)