Sec­ondary schools foot­ball kicks off its six­ty-first con­sec­u­tive sea­son this week­end and we hope to avoid a re­peat of the scan­dal rid­den 2024 sea­son. Last year, the league was dogged by con­tro­ver­sy re­sult­ing from un­eth­i­cal prac­tice and high lev­el or­gan­i­sa­tion­al paral­y­sis, ul­ti­mate­ly lead­ing to two Pre­mier Di­vi­sion schools be­ing docked points and one be­ing stripped of the League ti­tle.

The Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) is our biggest and most pop­u­lar league, with one hun­dred and forty schools and more than eight thou­sand play­ers. It is a key de­vel­op­ment path­way for young foot­ball tal­ent, and it con­sumes more spon­sor­ship dol­lars, more me­dia min­utes and col­umn inch­es, and more pub­lic at­ten­tion than the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier League.

Yet, of­fi­cial­ly at least, the league has nev­er seen it­self as part of any foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme.

No. The SS­FL is a recre­ation­al league, in­tend­ed to pro­vide ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar op­por­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents who like foot­ball. Its Aims and Ob­jec­tives re­quire the league, “to in­stil in the play­ers a true re­spect for law and au­thor­i­ty and to fos­ter the spir­it of sports­man­ship” and “to fa­cil­i­tate the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of the play­ers” - ed­u­ca­tion­al ob­jec­tives with no ref­er­ence to “elite” play­er de­vel­op­ment.

The ab­sence of strong youth club foot­ball —a se­ri­ous struc­tur­al fail­ing of TTFA over many decades—means that the SS­FL has al­ways func­tioned as the main, cer­tain­ly the most pop­u­lar, plat­form for youth play­ers to be seen by na­tion­al se­lec­tors and sup­port­ers. Giv­en that truth, the league as­sumes an out­sized sig­nif­i­cance to, and im­pact on, na­tion­al teams - a sit­u­a­tion that in­creas­ing­ly lim­its our per­for­mance and prospects at in­ter­na­tion­al youth lev­el. But more on that an­oth­er time. Suf­fice it to say that SS­FL, there­fore, has a huge, even if un­so­licit­ed, ath­let­ic and moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to na­tion­al foot­ball and the na­tion, as a whole. Giv­en that re­al­i­ty and last sea­son’s tur­moil, there’s a whole lot in SS­FL we could probe, but I wish to look at two is­sues now.

THE PRIN­CI­PALS’ LEAGUE

From in­cep­tion the league has been de­scribed as “the Prin­ci­pals’ league”, mean­ing school Prin­ci­pals have fi­nal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for and au­thor­i­ty over its op­er­a­tions. Still, over the years we have seen many un­eth­i­cal ac­tions in­volv­ing a Prin­ci­pal’s com­plic­i­ty or their ab­di­ca­tion of their su­per­vi­so­ry role to team of­fi­cials who seek tem­po­rary com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage. 2024 was no less so as SS­FL was forced to adopt dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures pro­voked by two ques­tions: 1) who is a le­git­i­mate stu­dent in a school, and 2) who is a prop­er­ly reg­is­tered play­er in the schools league.

The main con­tro­ver­sy cen­tred on a stu­dent who left school for an en­tire aca­d­e­m­ic year (Form 3) but who re­mained on the school reg­is­ter. He was pro­mot­ed from Form 2 to Form 4, turned up to school on 8 Oc­to­ber 2024, yet played three league match­es be­fore that date with­out hav­ing sat in a class. Mean­time, in an­oth­er case, a school Prin­ci­pal signed an SS­FL reg­is­tra­tion form for a play­er on 6 Sep­tem­ber 2024 while he was still a stu­dent of an­oth­er school. Said stu­dent of­fi­cial­ly trans­ferred in­to his new school on 19 Sep­tem­ber and made his de­but on 21 Sep­tem­ber, but was not prop­er­ly reg­is­tered with SS­FL’ un­til 29 Sep­tem­ber, eight days lat­er.

Points were de­duct­ed and a ti­tle was stripped af­ter all of that. But ques­tions arise. What were the per­son­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al ethics at work in this hor­ror show? What were chil­dren be­ing taught? Where did “re­spect for law and au­thor­i­ty” and “holis­tic de­vel­op­ment” go? And where was the over­sight that should be pro­vid­ed by the league?

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 “over age” 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.

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.

THE DIS­AP­PEAR­ANCE OF SHAWN COOP­ER

Shawn Coop­er was, un­til this sea­son, coach of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do. Dur­ing a twen­ty-five year SS­FL ca­reer he won count­less ti­tles and is the on­ly coach to win the Na­tion­al In­ter­Col with two dif­fer­ent schools (Na­pari­ma and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­leges).

On 15 March 25, aris­ing from is­sues with­in the men’s na­tion­al U17 team of which he was head coach, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is­sued a pub­lic state­ment de­clar­ing, “With im­me­di­ate ef­fect and in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion III, Ar­ti­cle 29 (of its Safe­guard­ing Code) Mr Shawn Coop­er is pro­hib­it­ed from coach­ing youth play­ers (18 years and un­der), un­til fur­ther no­tice.”

TTFA claimed “It is a re­stric­tion on the (Coop­er’s) li­cense and not a sus­pen­sion from foot­ball.” Call it what you will, “re­stric­tion” or “sus­pen­sion”, the TTFA has ef­fec­tive­ly banned Coop­er, who works al­most ex­clu­sive­ly in SS­FL and with na­tion­al youth teams, from foot­ball for an in­def­i­nite pe­ri­od.

TTFA’s “Safe­guard­ing Pol­i­cy and Frame­work” of­fers no pro­tec­tion to any­one ac­cused un­der its terms. It fo­cus­es on the vic­tims of al­leged safe­guard­ing mis­be­hav­iour. I do not know what the al­le­ga­tions against Coop­er are. These have nev­er been pub­licly dis­closed by any­one as­so­ci­at­ed with the mat­ter. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has sup­pos­ed­ly been “on­go­ing” for the last six months.

Mean­time, TTFA has re­port­ed­ly re­fused to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to Coop­er’s lawyer. And there­in lies the rub, be­cause the ab­sence of fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion has pro­mot­ed spec­u­la­tion, which threat­ens to com­plete­ly un­der­mine Coop­er’s hard won rep­u­ta­tion.

SS­FL Pres­i­dent Merere Gon­za­les, who is al­so a TTFA safe­guard­ing of­fi­cial, was quot­ed as say­ing, “Trinidad and To­ba­go is not ac­cus­tomed to safe­guard­ing be­cause a cul­ture has been de­vel­oped over the years of ir­reg­u­lar and wrong prac­tices, and habits are dif­fi­cult to break when you come with new ideas and ap­proach­es.”

As an aside, I find it rich that TTFA should pose as a paragon of safe­guard­ing virtue. It re­cent­ly sub­ject­ed the men’s na­tion­al U15 team to psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture af­ter fail­ing to prop­er­ly or­gan­ise its trav­el to Aru­ba for the Con­ca­caf U15 cham­pi­onship, leav­ing the boys and their par­ents tied in knots of anx­i­ety. It al­so re­cent­ly sent our un­der-pre­pared and out­matched “high per­for­mance” girls like lambs to slaugh­ter at the Con­ca­caf women’s U14 tour­na­ment (they con­ced­ed twen­ty-six goals and scored ze­ro in four match­es, fin­ish­ing last). Worse, it ad­ver­tised free en­try for Un­der 12 chil­dren to the Ja­maica WCQ “watch par­ty” co-spon­sored by Stag on a school night ear­li­er this week. But more on that an­oth­er day.

TTFA SAFE­GUARD­ING NOT SAFE FOR ALL

Safe­guard­ing is not es­o­teric sci­ence. What­ev­er the al­le­ga­tions against Coop­er are, it seems that one is enough to “fin­ish” you in TTFA. TTFA’s re­port­ed fail­ure to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to Coop­er is ob­struct­ing his prepa­ra­tion of a prop­er and ef­fec­tive de­fence. More­over, to ac­cuse any­one of any­thing un­der a dis­ci­pli­nary code that fails to de­fine a clear pro­ce­dure (in­clud­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion time­lines and penal­ties), and al­so fails to pro­vide pro­tec­tions for both ac­cuser AND ac­cused - leav­ing every­thing open end­ed and avail­able for ma­li­cious or ar­bi­trary be­hav­iour - is a de­nial of ba­sic prin­ci­ples of Nat­ur­al Jus­tice.

TTFA is hold­ing Coop­er hostage with the FI­FA reg­u­la­tion that for­bids re­sort to lo­cal courts, while seek­ing re­lief from the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport in Switzer­land, which FI­FA does al­low, is pro­hib­i­tive­ly ex­pen­sive. Mean­time, the dam­age be­ing done to Coop­er, his rep­u­ta­tion, his liveli­hood, and his fam­i­ly is prob­a­bly ir­repara­ble. Google the man’s name and the first thing that pops up is “TTFA bans U17 coach Shawn Coop­er”.

I re­peat—I do not know the de­tails of this tor­tu­ous mat­ter, but SS­FL has an in­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­mand TTFA be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able and to pur­sue its res­o­lu­tion. If such ar­bi­trary mal­treat­ment could be de­liv­ered to an SS­FL coach­ing icon, what prece­dent has been set for the abuse of any oth­er of­fi­cial? Re­li­able sources are whis­per­ing that TTFA has oth­er safe­guard­ing cas­es qui­et­ly pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion. These po­ten­tial­ly in­volve SS­FL coach­es. Pres­i­dent Gon­za­les must take off his TTFA hat, re­mem­ber he is SS­FL pres­i­dent, set him­self to en­sur­ing this Coop­er mat­ter and any oth­ers are con­clud­ed with despatch, and there­by pro­tect the in­ter­est of his mem­ber­ship, chil­dren and adults alike.