Some 150 ath­letes had al­ready reg­is­tered by the time the third an­nu­al Queen's Park Crick­et Club (QPCC) Eight-a-Side Youth Foot­ball Tour­na­ment was launched, yes­ter­day. This was an­nounced by chair­man of the foot­ball com­mit­tee for QPCC, Col­in Bor­de, min­utes be­fore the league-com­pris­ing three di­vi­sions (Un­der-11, 14 and 16)-kicked off. The launch saw the pre­sen­ta­tion of the spon­sors' cheque worth $30,000 by the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) and the Min­istry of Sport at the home venue for the tour­na­ment, the Queen's Park Oval in St Clair. Along with Bor­de, the launch was al­so at­tend­ed by QPCC pres­i­dent Bruce Aa­nensen, Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts and NL­CB mar­ket­ing chair­man Bri­an Sawh, all of whom de­liv­ered wel­com­ing and en­cour­ag­ing mes­sages to some of the play­ers in at­ten­dance. QPCC chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Lisa Abra­ham was al­so in at­ten­dance. The oth­er spon­sors, Bea­con, Blue Wa­ters and Piz­za Boys, have all built teams for all three di­vi­sions while the Min­istry of Sport/NL­CB has a sin­gle team tak­ing part in the Un­der-16 di­vi­sion. Match­es will con­tin­ue to­mor­row in all di­vi­sions.

There will then be two match days on Mon­day and next Wednes­day when the win­ners will be de­ter­mined. The youth event stems from the an­nu­al QPCC 8-A-Side Foot­ball Tour­na­ment which has been in ex­is­tence for 30 years. The se­nior ver­sion of the com­pe­ti­tion runs un­til Oc­to­ber 28. There are four di­vi­sions, con­sist­ing of 11 teams in all but the Over-55 di­vi­sion which con­sists of six teams. The se­nior di­vi­sions are as fol­lows: Open (Un­der-35), 36-45 years, 46-55 years and the Over-55 di­vi­sions. Teams chal­leng­ing the se­nior eight-a-side tour­na­ment are as fol­lows: Ap­ple­ton, Ad­van­tage Ad­ver­tis­ing, Ad­ver­tis­ing Im­pact, All Out, Au­di, Barkin Dogs, Bea­con In­sur­ance, Burg­er King, Carib Pil­sner Light, Ce­ram­ic Trinidad, Cinnabon, Dew­er's, Di­recTV, Dix­ee, Dos Pinos, E-Zone, First Cit­i­zens Bank, Flair, Gatorade, Gen­er­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion, Gulf Oil, House Hunters, Ju­nior Sam­my Group of Com­pa­nies, Mit­subishi Elec­tric, More Sushi, Neal & Massy Au­to­mo­tive, Pre­ci­sion Point, Ren­tok­il, Sagi­cor, Scooter­man, Seaboard Trinidad, Se­cu­ri­ty An­a­lyst, Shell He­lix, Shep­pard Se­cu­ri­ties, Sports & Games, Stag, Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors, Tribe and Trot­ters.