UNDER-18 football action will return on October 6 with the launch of the GUYOIL Tradewind Tankers Secondary Schools football tournament.

Launched yesterday at the GUYOIL Conference room in Kitty, the tournament will feature 12 secondary school teams, according to Petra Organisation co-director Troy Mendonca.

“Our focus in this tournament is to bring together the best 12 teams in the country competing in a league format where each team is going to play each other. In this case, they will play 11 times.”  

He noted that the tournament was done on an invitation basis as it is the inaugural year, speaking to the possibility of structured qualification policy for the next year.

The Petra co-director continued by saying that institutions such as Chase’s Academic Foundation, Sir Leon’s Lesson, Morgan’s Learning Centre and Buxton Youth Developers have not been drafted into the tournament.

“We think that their practices do not align to our philosophy. However, we would like to go on record in recognition of their efforts to the contribution to the growth of the game.”

The participating schools are Annandale Secondary (Region Four), Friendship Secondary (Region Four), Vergenoegen Secondary (Region 3), Uitvlugt Secondary (Region Three), Berbice High School (Region Six), Christianburg/Wismar (Region Ten), Bishops’ High (Georgetown), Lodge Secondary (Georgetown), Dolphin Secondary (Georgetown), Queenstown (Georgetown) and Queen’s College (Georgetown).

Head of the Physical Education Unit in the Allied Arts Department of the Ministry of Education, Nicholas Fraser, commended the body for another successful venture for grassroots football.

“With regard to the format, I am very happy to hear that it is going to be a league. I believe that this might be the first pure league football competition (for schools) in Guyana,” he said.

Jacqueline James, Marketing and Sales Manager for GUYOIL and the representative of Tradewind Tankers called for fair but intense play during the competition.

“We want to encourage you to have good clean fun. We also want to say to you that the sky is the limit and we want to make sure that the two top teams would be the best teams going forward.”

The winning, second-, third- and fourth-placed teams will all receive funding towards a project of their choice, with the top two teams gaining automatic qualification to the Petra/KFC four-team Invitational Goodwill football tournament in December.

The other two teams in that tournament will be Shiva Boys Hindu College from Trinidad and Annai of Region 7.

The tournament concludes on December 9 and games will be played on Saturdays and Sundays.