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ISSA reschedules due to late withdrawals
August 22, 2025
President of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) Keith Wellington says the late withdrawal of a number of schools from the daCosta Cup have left some groups with as few as three teams, resulting in the organisation having to make adjustments in order to balance those groups.
Three groups, C, L and M, only had three teams and to give those groups adequate matches in the preliminary round, schools from adjoining parishes had to be transferred to those groups.
Wellington said the number of matches teams in those groups would have to play is unfair, and a hefty fine has been placed on schools that withdrew late. in order to discourage the practice he said.
"We wanted to have groups of between six and eight. Unfortunately, there are schools that decided not to participate at the very last minute.
"There were only three participating schools in St Thomas, so we had to bring over Fair Prospect from Portland.
"In St Mary, we had only three schools, so we had to bring schools from Portland to join with them. And in Westmoreland we only had three schools as well," he noted.
"It comes down to what schools are able to afford to do. But we didn't want the schools to be too far apart because travelling and those things will be affected
"But the problem we have is that some schools decided at the last minute that they weren't going to participate," he said.
DaCosta Cup chairman Linvern Wright explained that 77 schools will make up the rural area competition this season, and that the shortage in some groups forced the organisation to adjust the qualification format for the first round just slightly.
Thirteen zones will be contested, and groups with seven or eight teams will have three teams qualifying to the next round, while the teams with four in a group will have two automatic qualifiers.
"Then we will have the best third-place teams qualifying from the rest to end up making 32 teams (for second round).
"The ones (groups) that have seven will play in a format where they have six or so matches first. After that depending in where they place, we are going to have the top four teams in that zone having a type of play-off and the three who come out on top will be the ones that go through.
So the top four will play-off and from that four the top three will go through," he explained.
For Wellington the the biggest issue with the smaller groups is that it doesn't afford some schools the opportunity to play enough football.
"When a group is reduced to four, two teams will end their season after playing six games and I think that is unfair."
However, under the circumstances, he said it was the fairest and most balanced system they could think of.
"I don't believe there are any issues or cause to believe that the format is unfair, especially bearing in mind that at the initial stage even if the group is small it's two teams that will come out of the initial stage. And for the larger group, it's three teams that come out. And you will still have opportunities for best third place," he said.
Meanwhile, CVM TV will take over broadcasting rights for this season and Wellington believes having CVM's Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Carlo Redwood as part of the team will definitely add value to the product.
"I am excited. CVM would have done schoolboy football before. We are happy that we found somebody who was able to take it on. And when we looked at CVM from a production and a marketing perspective. We think we have some of Jamaica's best in that regard.
"We are happy to work with Carlo, and we are hoping that there will be some exciting changes to how schoolboy football is broadcast, including us getting more games.
"It's very exciting because everybody in corporate Jamaica and football knows that Carlo will bring value to schoolboy football.
"Even from a sponsors perspective. I think it brings more confidence that the exposure they will get from the product will be heightened with his involvement."
He added also that there are no major changes in terms of the structure of the competition but that they are hoping to better execute than they have done in the past,
"We try and improve each year. But we are looking for the general public to support the teams, support the product and make it a successful year."
