By Joe Chapman
THE Upper Demerara Football Association’s (UDFA) senior First Division League will begin tonight when Net Rockers and Winners Connection come to grips at 18:00hrs in the opening game. The second of the double- header feature starts at 20:00hrs with Blueberry Hill taking on Botofago at the Mackenzie Sports Club ground.
This tournament gets into actual play after last Sunday’s opening with a march past where Regional Chairman Renis Morian congratulated the UDFA for playing a league tournament, despite the odds, and ensuring the game is played in the region in a competitive atmosphere.
UDFA president Sharma Solomon, in brief remarks, encouraged the clubs to be committed to the sport since it is one that the clubs should be proud of.
According to Solomon, “We are not starting this tournament with $10M but we are starting it with money; we are starting it with resources. If you notice, we do not have it branded as any organisation league. This is your league, it is the UDFA League.”
In light of this, Solomon cautioned the clubs that “this is our league. So it means that sort of commitment and seriousness must come from us in the football fraternity. That is how we will convince people to subscribe, to support, to sponsor and to give us the resources that we need to continue to play. We have to do that. Nobody is going to put effort and support behind things that they don’t have confidence in.”
On the heels of Solomon’s comments recently, the Guyana Football Federation’s Normalisation Committee made a donation of $1M to the UDFA and, according to General Secretary of the UDFA, Terrence Mitchell, the league will be played until December 9 after which there will be a break for the annual year end tournament.
Looking at the First Division league, Mitchell noted, “The winners who will be the first place finishers will get 40 per cent of the gate receipts for the entire tournament, which was agreed upon by the General Council and the executives of the football clubs at our first meeting.
Second prize is 20 per cent and third prize 10, while fourth-place finishers get five percent while 10 per cent will go to the UDFA for the development of football.”
In addition, each club will be given tickets to sell for the matches and the clubs will benefit, according to the UDFA Public Relations Officer (PRO) Victor Wright. He indicated that during the tournament each club can gain as much as $50 000 with proper pre-selling of tickets for the matches in the First Division League championship.
In Sunday’s opening exhibition matches there were two nil-all draws when the East of Linden met their West counterparts, and the Linden Rest Schools team held the National Secondary Schools champions, Christianburg/ Wismar Secondary, to a goalless stalemate also.
In the female encounter, however, Linden’s Demerara Queens scored a 2-0 win over the Little Divas of Georgetown, behind goals from Naomi Allsopp and Shirley Kingston.
Tomorrow, the league continues with another double header at the MSC ground instead of Friday. This is due to the opening of the Stag Beer Futsal tournament, organised by the New Era Entertainment.
Tomorrow the first game will be between Topp XX and Amelia’s Ward Panthers at 18:00hrs while at 20:00hrs Silver Shattas take on Eagles United.
The tournament continues on Sunday with Hi Stars playing Net Rockers in the first game and the second game brings together Milercok and Blueberry Hill at the tournament venue, MSC ground.