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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Frustrated Grosvenor calls foul on SSFL refs

by

20140918

Long-stang­ing St An­tho­ny's head coach Nigel Grosvenor feels that his school's name is be­ing tar­nished with the high num­ber of red cards con­ced­ed this sea­son and is call­ing for the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) to in­ter­vene.

Grosvenor yes­ter­day com­plained in writ­ing to SS­FL gen­er­al sec­re­tary Aza­ad Khan af­ter one of his play­ers, An­drew Rul­low, was red card­ed dur­ing the team's SS­FL Pre­mier Di­vi­sion clash against Shi­va Boys Hin­du Col­lege, in West­moor­ings, on Wednes­day.

It was the fourth red card re­ceived by St An­tho­ny's af­ter on­ly five match­es and Grosvenor said this paints a pic­ture of an in­dis­ci­plined team.

"I'm not writ­ing this let­ter be­cause of sour grapes or be­ing a cry ba­by I'm writ­ing it be­cause prob­a­bly some­thing that I write might make sense and some­one might lis­ten and make a change," he wrote.

Rul­low was eject­ed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter his sec­ond half in­tro­duc­tion and Grosvenor said this brought the play­er to tears as both were of the view that the ref­er­ee's call was un­jus­ti­fied.

Rul­low was brought to at­tack a St An­tho­ny's cor­ner close to the end of the match, with the scores locked at 2-2, when in a scram­ble for po­si­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Grosvenor, Rul­low mere­ly pulled his arm away when be­ing re­strained by the Shi­va play­er, who then dropped to the ground.

The coach said the as­sis­tant ref­er­ee waved his flag and ad­vised the head of­fi­cial to cau­tion the play­er, but the ref­er­ee dis­agreed and opt­ed to eject Rul­low in­stead.

A red card in the SS­FL comes with a one-match sus­pen­sion and this will un­doubt­ed­ly cre­ate a tac­ti­cal headache for Grosvenor, who had four play­ers tem­porar­i­ly de­part the team for na­tion­al Un­der-17 du­ties.

"Over the years I have taught my play­ers to be ag­gres­sive but legal­ly so and as many oth­er coach­es have done," he said. "How­ev­er, some­how to my be­lief I don't think we are to­geth­er in this think­ing with some of the ref­er­ees in Trinidad. In my ex­pe­ri­ence as a coach in­clud­ing that of a na­tion­al coach, the ref­er­ees do not let the game flow. There are too much stop­pages for calls that we call 'soft'. To me they tend to quick­ly pull out cards that will ob­vi­ous­ly low­er the tem­po of the game killing it's in­ten­si­ty and it's beau­ty."

He added: "Pro­fes­sion­al ref­er­ees try and let the game flow. They try their best to re­frain from show­ing too many yel­low cards and es­pe­cial­ly red cards. They know their role. On the field they know it is about the play­ers and not about them, they know that the play­ers are the en­ter­tain­ers and should let them play.

"Ref­er­ees down here are like DJs. When the crowd is en­joy­ing the mu­sic, they cut it and call it a mix."

"Teams abroad play ag­gres­sive, hard foot­ball and they are taught that from young (that) they are en­cour­aged to do so and they are as­sist­ed to do so from the ref­er­ees in there var­i­ous leagues. Our youths down here are ham­pered in do­ing so in fear of re­ceiv­ing a card. Our ref­er­ees must change their think­ing and try and let the play­ers play as much as pos­si­ble. Thank you for your time and I hope some­thing I said made sense," he con­clud­ed.

St An­tho­ny's cur­rent­ly leads the SS­FL Pre­mier Di­vi­sion stand­ings with 15 points from five straight wins, while St Mary's Col­lege sits sec­ond on 11 points al­so af­ter five match­es.

Pre­mier Di­vi­sion stand­ings

Stand­ings

Teams Pld W D L F A Pts

St An­tho­ny's 5 2 0 0 17 5 15

St Mary's 5 3 2 0 8 2 11

St Bene­dict's 5 3 1 1 7 4 10

Na­pari­ma 5 3 0 2 6 7 9

St Au­gus­tine 5 2 2 1 9 8 8

Trin­i­ty East 5 2 2 1 8 8 8

Ari­ma North 5 2 2 1 9 7 7

San Juan North 5 2 0 3 12 8 6

Shi­va Boys 5 2 0 3 9 7 6

Pre­sen­ta­tion S/do 5 2 0 3 9 9 6

Cara­pichaima East 5 1 2 2 6 8 5

Fa­ti­ma 5 1 2 2 5 11 5

Ch­agua­nas North 5 0 1 4 1 10 1

East Mu­cu­rapo 5 0 1 4 2 9 1

Fix­tures

Sat­ur­day - Pre­mier Di­vi­sion

All match­es kick off at 3.45 pm

St Au­gus­tine v St An­tho­ny's, St Au­gus­tine

San Juan North v Shi­va Boys HC, San Juan

Na­pari­ma Col­lege v Ari­ma North, Lewis St, San Fer­nan­do

St Mary's Col­lege v Cara­pichaima East, St Mary's

Fa­ti­ma Col­lege v St Bene­dict's, Fa­ti­ma

Pre­sen­ta­tion San F'do v Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Guaracara Park

Ch­agua­nas North v East Mu­cu­rapo, Ch­agua­nas


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