There is no deny­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball is nowhere near where it needs to be.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est FI­FA men's rank­ing, T&T is cur­rent­ly ranked at num­ber 104 in world.

That is just two places away from our low­est rank­ing ever.

The low­est point the team had ever sunk to was in 2010, when it was ranked 106th.

This is a far cry from the 25-placed rank­ing T&T had in 2001, which was the be­gin­ning of a new phase of re­build­ing.

It is al­so a dis­tance away from the qual­i­ty of foot­ball pro­duced when the So­ca War­riors took the heart of the na­tion with them to the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many, hav­ing qual­i­fied as the small­est na­tion ever to do so.

But T&T’s cur­rent rank­ing is prob­a­bly sur­pris­ing to no one, as the So­ca War­riors fin­ished dead last in the King's Cup ex­hi­bi­tion tour­na­ment last month, los­ing against Tajik­istan and Thai­land.

Tajik­istan is cur­rent­ly ranked 108 and Thai­land is ranked 111. Malaysia, who al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the four-team tour­na­ment and placed sec­ond over­all, is cur­rent­ly ranked 146.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the T&T women's team is not far­ing much bet­ter in the rank­ings than their male coun­ter­parts.

The T&T women's team is cur­rent­ly ranked 75. This coun­try's low­est rank­ing be­fore this year was 73.

But the sil­ver lin­ing of sorts in this dark cloud of foot­ball in T&T has proven to be the Sec­ondary School's Foot­ball League (SS­FL).

Yes­ter­day, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege were crowned the 2022 Pre­mier League Cham­pi­ons af­ter a hard-fought 3-1 vic­to­ry over Fa­ti­ma Col­lege.

Both teams were un­de­feat­ed up to yes­ter­day's last game.

But there were no losers af­ter yes­ter­day’s game.

Foot­ball won.

Yes­ter­day's fi­nal be­tween St Bene­dict's Col­lege and Fa­ti­ma Col­lege was able to at­tract a crowd at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va that even the na­tion­al teams, both men and women, would be proud of.

And this was not an anom­aly, as, through­out the league, spec­ta­tors con­sis­tent­ly showed up in their num­bers to cheer on the young play­ers. In any event, school foot­ball has al­ways had a tra­di­tion of good sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly since the play­ers have ready­made sup­port in the form of close fam­i­ly, friends, school­mates, al­ma mater and mem­bers of the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties turn­ing up to sup­port the schools par­tic­i­pat­ing in the var­i­ous com­pe­ti­tions.

Af­ter a forced two-year hia­tus be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the re­stric­tions put in place to stop its spread, this sea­son is a wel­come re­turn to ac­tiv­i­ties on and off the field of play.

Dur­ing a pe­ri­od where school fights and oth­er neg­a­tives are reg­u­lar­ly high­light­ed on so­cial me­dia, it is heart­en­ing to see school chil­dren com­ing to­geth­er in a bet­ter light.

But this is not lim­it­ed on­ly to the boys.

The girls have al­so been able to at­tract crowds to their games.

We ap­plaud all the par­ties re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing this a suc­cess­ful league and wish them the best go­ing for­ward with all oth­er schools' foot­ball com­pe­ti­tions.

This is a bright spot in a coun­try call­ing out for some­thing to cel­e­brate amid ris­ing crime and oth­er atroc­i­ties.