“It is not the young peo­ple that de­gen­er­ate. They are not spoilt till those of ma­ture age are al­ready sunk in­to cor­rup­tion.”

(Baron de Mon­tesquieu,

18th-cen­tu­ry French philoso­pher).

I thought long and hard be­fore writ­ing this ar­ti­cle. Af­ter all, I had writ­ten on the theme be­fore. In the end I con­vinced my­self that an­oth­er ar­ti­cle was war­rant­ed by two more in­ci­dents in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League, which high­light the is­sue of eth­i­cal be­hav­iour and the need for in­sti­tu­tion­al re­in­force­ment of same – in­ci­dents which are an al­le­go­ry for life in mod­ern Trinidad and To­ba­go. I men­tion no names be­cause I con­sid­er them un­nec­es­sary.

Pri­or to the league’s 2025 SS­FL kick­off, I wrote in my Guardian col­umn en­ti­tled “SS­FL 2025: Mat­ters Aris­ing” (11 Sep­tem­ber) of my hope for avoid­ance of a re­peat of the scan­dal-rid­den 2024 sea­son and called for a tighter reg­is­tra­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary op­er­a­tion – alas, to lit­tle ef­fect. In that ar­ti­cle I wrote, “Ob­vi­ous­ly, SS­FL re­lies on eth­i­cal prac­tice by the adults in schools’ foot­ball to en­sure an eth­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion. School and team of­fi­cials bear ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in this re­gard.

How­ev­er, some prin­ci­pals leave foot­ball mat­ters to un­su­per­vised coach­es and man­agers. For this rea­son, prob­lems per­sist with “over­age” play­ers be­ing used in low­er di­vi­sions, stu­dents be­ing ab­sent from school dur­ing the day but don­ning match uni­forms in the af­ter­noon, and stu­dents pass­ing through school like the prover­bial “dose of salts” with lit­tle to show at the end of their years there.” I con­tin­ued, “SS­FL op­er­ates its mas­sive com­pe­ti­tion with ONE full-time em­ploy­ee and re­lies on vol­un­tary, part-time per­son­nel. The league needs to for­ti­fy its reg­is­tra­tion, over­sight and dis­ci­pli­nary mech­a­nisms to en­sure that we are spared an­oth­er shame­ful episode in 2025. Sure­ly, the coun­try’s biggest league could find spon­sor­ship dol­lars to fi­nance a full-time and com­pe­tent reg­is­tra­tion and com­pe­ti­tions staff.”

Yet, sure enough, on­ly days ago we learnt of more un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour in the league, fly­ing be­low the pub­lic radar, in­volv­ing fa­mil­iar de­tails of il­le­gal­i­ty. On 2 Oc­to­ber the league’s Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee de­cid­ed on a protest by one Pre­mier Di­vi­sion school against an­oth­er over il­le­gal use of an un­reg­is­tered play­er in a 1:1 drawn match. The ac­cused school was pun­ished with a de­duc­tion of the one point it got for the draw, while three points plus three goals were award­ed to the ac­cuser. SS­FL ev­i­dent­ly suf­fers an in­tractable in­abil­i­ty to per­form reg­is­tra­tion checks and to con­trol this prob­lem of un­reg­is­tered play­ers tak­ing the field. As Pres­i­dent of the TT Su­per League (from 2017 to 2019), in or­der to en­sure ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tion of com­pe­ti­tions, I ac­cessed vol­un­teer ser­vices from uni­ver­si­ty sports diplo­ma stu­dents. More hands on deck to get a job done ef­fec­tive­ly. Sure­ly, SS­FL could do like­wise? But be­yond the avail­abil­i­ty of per­son­nel, an­oth­er SS­FL ad­min­is­tra­tive weak­ness is that, in­cred­i­bly, a school may reg­is­ter play­ers up to the last match of the sea­son. Un­like every oth­er of­fi­cial league or com­pe­ti­tion that I know of glob­al­ly, there is no reg­is­tra­tion win­dow, up­on the ex­piry of which reg­is­tra­tion clos­es, a fi­nal team list is is­sued by the gov­ern­ing body, and play­er el­i­gi­bil­i­ty checks are fa­cil­i­tat­ed. Open reg­is­tra­tion un­til the last match means the team list is po­ten­tial­ly in flux all sea­son, and this un­der­mines match day reg­is­tra­tion con­trol. I sug­gest to SS­FL that it needs to in­tro­duce a reg­is­tra­tion win­dow, which clos­es on an agreed date (for ex­am­ple, af­ter Match Day 4), af­ter which per­ma­nent team lists that are ac­ces­si­ble to all schools for mu­tu­al reg­is­tra­tion checks would be is­sued. This would re­quire the co­op­er­a­tion of Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion su­per­vi­sors who must ap­prove in­ter-school trans­fers, etc., in a time­ly man­ner, but SS­FL is the “Prin­ci­pals’ League”. Right?

For whom the bell tolls

“There­fore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

(From “Med­i­ta­tion XVII” by John Donne, Eng­lish po­et, 1624).

Yet this is not on­ly about weak ad­min­is­tra­tion. It is de­cid­ed­ly al­so about the dai­ly strug­gle over ethics in the league and cor­rup­tion in our so­ci­ety as a whole. The first me­dia re­port on this dis­ci­pli­nary breach stat­ed, “This is the third time that (teacher/coach’s name called)’s team has been caught us­ing an il­le­git­i­mate play­er in 13 months.” So the school los­es some points sea­son af­ter sea­son but con­tin­ues with its lack of care for league reg­u­la­tions while the main per­pe­tra­tor of this egre­gious be­hav­iour, a teacher in the school, es­capes un­pun­ished to re­peat it time and again. This is out­ra­geous.

The on­ly way some­one could per­sis­tent­ly en­gage in this type of cor­rupt prac­tice is if the su­per­vis­ing au­thor­i­ty – SS­FL – with gross in­sti­tu­tion­al dis­re­gard for its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, turns a blind eye to his in­cor­ri­gi­ble be­hav­iour. The mat­ter has been de­ter­mined, but for fu­ture ref­er­ence there should be con­se­quences: 1) The SS­FL ex­ec­u­tive should be held to ac­count by league mem­bers for in­com­pe­tence and re­peat­ed fail­ure to de­fend eth­i­cal stan­dards; 2) a more strin­gent au­to­mat­ic sanc­tion should ap­ply, ac­cord­ing to league reg­u­la­tions, to any school that is found guilty of such be­hav­iour – that is, de­mo­tion; 3) if this teacher/coach comes be­fore the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee on a sim­i­lar charge in the fu­ture, he should be banned; and 4) the school prin­ci­pal should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for lack of fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, if not in­tegri­ty.

Mean­time, out­side of the SS­FL’s Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, in its East Zone U16 com­pe­ti­tion, it is al­leged that one school, which has two teams in the com­pe­ti­tion, has re­peat­ed­ly over the course of three weeks can­celled a sched­uled match be­tween its B team and a strong ri­val of its A team in or­der to avoid a heavy loss and there­by elim­i­nate said ri­val from ti­tle con­tention by goal dif­fer­ence, since the ri­val would re­ceive three points for a de­fault but on­ly three goals. The ac­cused, de­fault­ing school claims it mere­ly could not field a team and says its rep­u­ta­tion is be­ing scan­dalised. The ag­griev­ed, ri­val school has writ­ten to SS­FL de­mand­ing the fix­ture be ful­filled or that the de­fault­ing school’s “en­tire foot­ball pro­gramme should bear the con­se­quences for that”.

The SS­FL Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee now has a gilt-edged op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fend the rep­u­ta­tion of the league and the game. But why one school is al­lowed to field two teams in the same com­pe­ti­tion is be­yond me. SS­FL should not per­mit this, as it is con­trary to FI­FA reg­u­la­tions. It is a recipe for match fix­ing; it al­lows a school with mul­ti­ple teams to po­ten­tial­ly rig the com­pe­ti­tion; and it is a chal­lenge to the com­pe­ti­tion’s in­tegri­ty. It threat­ens good sport­ing ethics, and it po­ten­tial­ly brings the school, the league and the game in­to dis­re­pute. Even if no un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour is in play, this arrange­ment al­lows for spec­u­la­tion and ru­mour that it is. Giv­en all of the above, it seems to me that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion needs to es­tab­lish and have prin­ci­pals ob­serve and en­force a manda­to­ry Code of Ethics for all per­son­nel as­so­ci­at­ed with school sports be­cause each cor­rupt ac­tion and each sus­pi­cion of un­eth­i­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ing di­min­ish­es the in­di­vid­ual, the school com­mu­ni­ty he or she be­longs to, and so­ci­ety as a whole. Yes, this is where we are to­day as lead­ers of chil­dren and in a cor­rupt­ed so­ci­ety.

Cor­rup­tion and un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour are cul­ture in our coun­try. They are en­dem­ic and per­va­sive. They stalk the pages of our dai­ly news­pa­pers, from pol­i­tics to busi­ness to law to law en­force­ment to crime to sport. And the lit­tle cor­rupt and un­eth­i­cal prac­tices to be found in every crevice of dai­ly life have be­come so nor­mal that many peo­ple do not even recog­nise or un­der­stand them for what they are. They flour­ish be­cause peo­ple, pow­er­ful and not so pow­er­ful, ac­cept them as the lu­bri­cant of life, liv­ing and do­ing busi­ness. So­cial in­sti­tu­tions – par­tic­u­lar­ly sport, where young peo­ple gath­er – and civ­il so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing SS­FL, are on the front line of our strug­gle for young hearts and minds. They must pro­tect our young and ed­u­cate them in prop­er civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­cause, while they may be young, our youth are nei­ther blind nor stu­pid. They watch adult be­hav­iour and ab­sorb lessons, good and bad. It is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of those who in­ter­act with and teach chil­dren to al­ways up­hold good per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al ethics. When we con­demn young peo­ple for a lack of dis­ci­pline and moral fi­bre, let us re­mem­ber to al­so con­demn so­ci­ety for read­i­ly pro­vid­ing them with role mod­els of bad be­hav­iour, shap­ing their val­ues, at­ti­tudes, and ac­tions. Our youth must have pos­i­tive role mod­els in their lives who can pro­vide pos­i­tive guid­ance and ex­am­ples. Chil­dren fol­low our lead, SS­FL. And your league is about much more than foot­ball, ti­tles and spon­sor­ship dol­lars. Re­mem­ber that.