Merere Gon­za­les, pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL), says there is still the pos­si­bil­i­ty of To­ba­go schools, Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary and Spey­side Sec­ondary, be­ing part of the 17-team Pre­mier Di­vi­sion for the up­com­ing sea­son.

Gon­za­les made this dis­clo­sure dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports Wednes­day, where he stat­ed that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing both schools com­pete has come about with the ex­pect­ed com­ing on board of a ma­jor en­ti­ty, which will play a ma­jor role in fi­nanc­ing the trav­el­ing ex­pens­es for teams trav­el­ling be­tween both is­lands.

For the up­com­ing 2026 sea­son of the SS­FL Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Na­pari­ma Col­lege will play along­side schools from across the coun­try—North, South, East, and Cen­tral, to date.

A mat­ter of fi­nan­cial con­strains

How­ev­er, in a de­ci­sion tak­en late last month af­ter it was pro­posed by North Zone SS­FL chair­man Joseph Tay­lor, the for­mer prin­ci­pal of Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary, the SS­FL ex­ec­u­tive agreed to omit the To­ba­go schools (Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary and Spey­side Sec­ondary) from the up­com­ing Pre­mier Di­vi­sion cam­paign, leav­ing the league with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion from To­ba­go for the first time in 12 sea­sons.

The de­ci­sion was due main­ly to fi­nan­cial con­straints, which in the past have af­fect­ed teams trav­el­ling to and from To­ba­go for match­es.

As a re­sult, the SS­FL ex­ec­u­tive fur­ther de­ter­mined that the two last-placed teams, Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary and Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary School, would be de­mot­ed from the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion to their re­spec­tive To­ba­go Zone and Cen­tral Zone Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sions.

This meant the 2026 sea­son was due to fea­ture 15 teams in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion com­pet­ing in 14 rounds of match­es, while the four To­ba­go schools, in­clu­sive of Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary and Bish­op’s High School, con­test four rounds of league match­es amongst them­selves for 12 games each, at the end of which, the top two schools in each com­pe­ti­tion would con­test a ‘Big Four’ play­off.

How­ev­er, that de­ci­sion came in for heavy crit­i­cism from To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Ever­ton Al­fred as well as To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Chavez Au­gus­tine, with the lat­ter go­ing as far as to say that they were con­sid­er­ing their le­gal op­tions as it per­tains to the de­ci­sion to omit the To­ba­go schools from the up­com­ing 2026 Pre­mier Di­vi­sion sea­son.

But in re­ply, Gon­za­les, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, said the SS­FL was first mind­ful of hav­ing their 2026 sea­son fin­ish on time and not go over in­to the new year, which has hap­pened with­in the last cou­ple of years.

He said, “When that hap­pens, it re­al­ly takes away from the va­lid­i­ty, the le­git­i­ma­cy, and the en­joy­ment of this sea­son when it is not con­clud­ed by a cer­tain time, some­times be­cause of post­pone­ments, which puts us in a bind be­cause of the lim­it­ed time to com­plete this sea­son. So at the Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing, we had two pro­pos­als be­fore us, and we had quite a lengthy dis­cus­sion about three weeks ago at the Tech­ni­cal Cen­tre in Cou­va, where we had a lengthy dis­cus­sion and then ar­rived at a de­ci­sion by vote.”

He said, un­der vot­ing, we had those nine in favour of the pro­pos­al from the vote, six against, and six ab­sten­tions, de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly. We have to re­spect the fact that this is what has un­fold­ed.

With the pro­pos­al from the North Zone, it would have been that the 15 schools from Trinidad would play the op­po­nent once. So that means they will end up with 14 games in to­tal.

To­ba­go teams to play four rounds among them­selves

The four teams in To­ba­go are Spey­side, Sig­nal Hill, Bish­ops, and Scar­bor­ough. With those four teams, they will play each oth­er four times, which means that each school will end up play­ing at least 12 games, which is very close to the num­ber in Trinidad, which will be 14 games.

At the end of the league in To­ba­go, the win­ner or the team with the most points will now qual­i­fy; it’s up to three in Trinidad, and they will go in­to a big four. That was a pro­pos­al from the north.

“The pro­pos­al from the South Zone was for two groups, one with nine and one with eight, be­cause they are 17 teams for this com­ing sea­son. With that now, the group with nine will have eight games, on­ly one round, while the group with eight will have sev­en games. So what we are look­ing at, you know, will have few­er games when you play with the two groups. In com­par­i­son to the one where you have these 17 teams in­volved where you have 16 games,” ex­plained Gon­za­les.

He said, “So, in light of that, and with the two groups, then the top two teams from each group would have moved on to play the Big Four” and get the win­ner for the league. Dis­cus­sion, and then they vot­ed, and they de­cid­ed to go the way of the North Zone pro­pos­al, which is the group of Trinidad and the group of To­ba­go. Now in it­self, that may not be the best arrange­ment be­cause what you want is that it is bet­ter if the teams play each oth­er.”

Gon­za­les point­ed out that fi­nance will be in a crit­i­cal area, a cru­cial area. We usu­al­ly pro­vide a grant to the schools of about $8,000 to $10,000, which is re­al­ly not enough, but it is still at least an as­sis­tance for them. And this grant is giv­en to both schools in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Even while the THA sup­ports the schools in To­ba­go, which, again, we are very grate­ful for, es­pe­cial­ly with trav­el­ing.”

He added, “How­ev­er, there have been con­cerns sub­se­quent to that in­for­ma­tion be­ing re­vealed to the pub­lic, and we are present­ly around the ta­ble in dis­cus­sion with a sig­nif­i­cant en­ti­ty in the coun­try con­cern­ing get­ting the nec­es­sary fund­ing that will most like­ly al­low us to pos­si­bly maybe have the two groups of nine and eight teams or pos­si­bly the group that will have the 17 teams in­volved.”

Gon­za­les un­der­stands

THA con­cerns

With re­gard to the con­cerns raised by the THA about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the To­ba­go schools be­ing left out of the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, Gon­za­les said, ‘They have a great con­cern, and I can un­der­stand that and pos­si­bly al­so the mem­bers liv­ing in To­ba­go; there is a feel­ing that To­ba­go would not get a fair share of the lev­el of foot­ball, es­pe­cial­ly as some of the more pro­lif­ic schools or teams are in Trinidad.’

He said, “With all due re­spect to To­ba­go, of which Sig­nal Hill is one of the pow­er­hous­es too, not to take away from Spey­side Sec­ondary, Bish­op’s High School, or Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary. So they are con­cerned about that, and that’s un­der­stand­able. But this is what we had dis­cussed and agreed on, of which all five zones were aware when we had the meet­ing and dis­cus­sion and the vote.”

He con­tin­ued, “We are trust­ing that with the very mean­ing­ful, im­pact­ful in­ter­ven­tion of the en­ti­ty, and based on that, I can­not dis­close that as yet, but that will be re­vealed very soon. It is now present­ly, as I said, in dis­cus­sion mode, and the in­ten­tion is to for­go the Trinidad and To­ba­go schools sep­a­rate­ly and ei­ther re­vert to the one group of 17 teams or the two groups where you will have one group with nine, one group with eight, and the two teams from To­ba­go, which in this case will be Spey­side and Sig­nal Hill; they will each be placed in a group, and what you will have is in­ter-is­land trav­el­ling of the schools, but at least in this case, they will have less trav­el­ling to do, and this will be fund­ed by this en­ti­ty.”

A spon­sor is crit­i­cal

to the league

If the fi­nanc­ing is there, which looks as though it will be there now, it will be no prob­lem ei­ther to re­vert to one out of two, which will be the group of 17, where each team plays and they will have 16 games each, or the group of two, where you have group one with nine and one with eight.

Gon­za­les said. “We are meet­ing with a lot of stake­hold­ers, the in­cum­bents, spon­sors, and even those prospec­tive spon­sors that are in­ter­est­ed in com­ing on board with the SS­FL for the 2026 sea­son. Hav­ing a lot of meet­ings, ex­ec­u­tive as well as gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ings and ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ings, to keep the mem­ber­ship up-to-date with all that is hap­pen­ing.”

He point­ed out that “one of the things that we have dis­cov­ered for the up­com­ing 2026 sea­son is that the fi­nances that we would usu­al­ly have to ab­sorb the ex­pens­es of the sea­son are not as wel­com­ing as they should be. And that’s sim­ply be­cause of the fact that while we do ap­pre­ci­ate the in­cum­bent spon­sors that we have, we have had the ab­sence now of Sports­max, Dig­i­cel, and even NGC, who would have cer­tain­ly been pro­vid­ing over the last cou­ple of years in­valu­able sup­port.”

The SS­FL boss not­ed that they have al­ready for­mat­ted a present fix­ture with the league set to get go­ing on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 11, with a dou­ble-head­er at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, with a girls’ sea­son open­er from 3 pm fol­lowed by a boys’ clash from 5 pm.