The Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) has an­nounced a ball-jug­gling com­pe­ti­tion as a re­place­ment for the tra­di­tion­al on-the-field foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion from this year in­to next year.

New pres­i­dent Merere Gon­za­les dur­ing an on­line press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day said at­tempts were made to have ac­tu­al on-the-field play this year, but the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has had dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects on T&T, in par­tic­u­lar, and the world at large.

The com­pe­ti­tion is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a form of com­pe­ti­tion for stu­dent/ath­letes wish­ing to pur­sue foot­ball schol­ar­ships and pro­fes­sion­al con­tracts and is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate the same lev­el of in­ter­est and ex­cite­ment as the on-the-field play, Gon­za­les ex­plained.

"We were trust­ing that we could have had the phys­i­cal on-the-field foot­ball but the glob­al im­pact of the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to have that neg­a­tive reper­cus­sion in the world and more so T&T, and as much as the Sec­ondary Schools' Foot­ball League would have put in place all the nec­es­sary safe­ty pro­to­cols, we still need­ed to get the sanc­tion and per­mis­sion of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty to have on-the-field foot­ball.

"In light of that, we have some oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties, and on the front burn­er, we have the ball jug­gling com­pe­ti­tion. We are very con­cerned for the stu­dent-ath­letes in par­tic­u­lar.

"It is ac­tu­al­ly the sec­ond sea­son that we have been un­able to have one, which is no fault of ours, but we feel very much able to cre­ate, im­ple­ment and pro­vide that plat­form for the stu­dent-ath­letes to still be in­ter­est­ed in the game they love so much, and in this case foot­ball."

Ac­cord­ing to the SS­FL boss: "For some, they will be work­ing to­wards util­is­ing any form of event or ac­tiv­i­ty to add to their re­sumes, in the event that those who are pur­su­ing foot­ball schol­ar­ships or foot­ball con­tract. Hav­ing said that, pro­vid­ing this ball jug­gling show­down is still keep­ing them en­gaged and in­volved."

A few oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties to en­gage the stu­dent-ath­letes will be re­vealed in the com­ing weeks, Gon­za­les said, as he tries to de­liv­er on pre­vi­ous promis­es made af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice.

Reg­is­tra­tion for the ball jug­gling com­pe­ti­tion will be free of charge but par­tic­i­pants will be re­quired to re­turn their reg­is­tra­tion forms by the dead­line date of De­cem­ber 3, 2021.

Forms will be made avail­able from Fri­day. Gon­za­les al­so an­nounced that T&T Women's foot­ball cap­tain Karyn Forbes will be one of five judges for the com­pe­ti­tion.

Forbes who re­cent­ly re­leased her first book called 'Woman of Sub­stance' will join a team, com­pris­ing her team­mate Maylee At­tin-John­son, Jef­fer­son George, pres­i­dent of the Uni­fied Foot­ball Coach­es of T&T, for­mer na­tion­al play­er Makan His­lop and Clay­ton Mor­ris, a for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er, cap­tain, coach and T&T Su­per League pres­i­dent.

Par­tic­i­pants of the ball jug­gling com­pe­ti­tion will be re­quired to sup­ply video pre­sen­ta­tions fol­low­ing the rules and reg­u­la­tions, which in­clude be­ing ful­ly dressed in the school's uni­form, jug­gling done on a foot­ball field, show the size of the ball used (size 5), bounc­ing ball be­fore jug­gling is done, and jug­gling must be done with dif­fer­ent parts of the body, among many oth­er rules.