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As­cen­sion Foot­ball League Thread

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Flex:
Connection, Stars, Central opt out Ascension League
By Walter Alibey (Guardian).

Top T&T Pro League con­tenders W Con­nec­tion, North East Stars, Cen­tral FC and Point Fortin Civic will not take part in this year’s in­au­gur­al As­cen­sion Foot­ball League, which is be­ing spon­sored by a for­eign com­pa­ny that sup­plies sports cloth­ing, gear and oth­er equip­ment.

The league is set to kick off this week­end (Ju­ly 12) and will fea­ture six pro league teams, name­ly San Juan Jabloteh, Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed, Club San­do, Po­lice FC, De­fence Force and La Hor­quet­ta Rangers. They will be joined by six oth­er teams from the T&T Su­per League to com­plete the list of 12 com­peti­tors for Di­vi­sion One of the tour­na­ment.

FC San­ta Rosa, the 2018 Su­per League’s win­ner, Queen’s Park Crick­et Club (QPCC), Pris­ons Ser­vice FC, Cunu­pia FC, Guaya Unit­ed and Matu­ra Re-Unit­ed have been el­e­vat­ed to con­test Di­vi­sion One.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Con­nec­tion Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Re­nee John-Williams said her coach­es be­lieve the pre-sea­son tour­na­ment will not give them the type of prepa­ra­tion they re­quire ahead of the much-fan­cied T-League, which, be­cause of the in­volve­ment of UE­FA and FI­FA, will re­place the T&T Pro League as the coun­try’s tier 1 com­pe­ti­tion.

“Both Stu­art-Charles Fevri­er and Earl Jean made that de­ci­sion and I am very con­fi­dent in my tech­ni­cal team,” John-Williams said.

She not­ed the coach­es may al­so not want to risk in­juries in the tour­na­ment, so they pre­fer to pre­pare the play­ers in an­oth­er man­ner.

W Con­nec­tion has been the coun­try’s most suc­cess­ful foot­ball club, cop­ping half a dozen league ti­tles, along with four FA Cups, six First Cit­i­zens Cups, three CFU Club Cham­pi­onships and tro­phies in the Dig­i­cel Shield and Toy­ota Clas­sic, among oth­ers.

John-Williams said her club of­fi­cial­ly be­gan train­ing re­cent­ly, a month or so be­fore the un­of­fi­cial start of the T-League in Sep­tem­ber. It has been ru­moured that the south­ern club could not put to­geth­er a team due to fi­nan­cial rea­sons. Guardian Me­dia Sports learnt that many of Con­nec­tion’s play­ers have sought green­er pas­tures at La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, the team that ac­quired St Ann’s Rangers back in 2018.

John-Williams al­so ex­plained her team will, this year, fo­cus on play­er de­vel­op­ment.

The As­cen­sion League will pro­vide teams with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cash in on a hand­some first prize of $250,000, plus an ap­pear­ance fee of $2,000 for each match, to be paid at the end of every month. The run­ner-up will re­ceive $125,000 and there will al­so be prizes for the top four teams. Teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in the league will not be re­quired to pay a reg­is­tra­tion fee, or­ga­niz­ers said yes­ter­day.

Yes­ter­day, North East Stars Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Di­rec­tor Michael Awai said his team re­fused to play in the tour­na­ment be­cause there is no se­cu­ri­ty for his play­ers.

“There are no con­tracts for play­ers and they are un­aware of the en­ti­ty that will be run­ning the tour­na­ment. If our play­ers are in­jured, then what hap­pens next?” Awai asked.

Mean­while, Garthorne Craig, chair­man of Point Fortin Civic, said his team missed the tour­na­ment’s reg­is­tra­tion dead­line date and so they will not be play­ing.

Di­vi­sion Two of the tour­na­ment will al­so com­prise 12 teams from the Su­per League. Like the Di­vi­sion One, it will fea­ture a hand­some prize struc­ture along with an ap­pear­ance fee of $1,000 per club for each match to be paid at the end of the month.

The league is set to be launched to­day at a press con­fer­ence at the Ho­tel Nor­mandie in St Ann’s.

Flex:
$2.3M Ascension League to fix football.
By Walter Alibey (Guardian).

A whop­ping $2.3 mil­lion have been put out on the As­cen­sion Foot­ball League, to en­sure foot­ball in T&T gets back on track, cour­tesy an un­known Unit­ed States cloth­ing com­pa­ny that is de­sirous of en­ter­ing the Caribbean mar­ket.

The League is set to kick off on Fri­day with two match­es, one at the Ari­ma Velo­drome be­tween home team FC San­ta Rosa and Queen's Park CC from 8 pm, and an­oth­er at the Guayagua­yare Recre­ation Ground be­tween Guaya Unit­ed and Po­lice FC from 6 pm.

At a launch at Galery 1 of the Ho­tel Nor­mandie in St Ann's yes­ter­day, chief or­gan­is­er Richard Piper said As­cen­sion's in­put has been grand, and it ranges from prize monies to pay­ments for pro­mo­tion and tele­vi­sion cov­er­age, to in­sur­ance for play­ers, and pay­ment of all of­fi­cials.

As re­port­ed in the Guardian yes­ter­day, the League will be played in two di­vi­sions, each com­pris­ing 12 teams. Di­vi­sion I will fea­ture Guaya Unit­ed, Po­lice FC, FC San­ta Rosa, Queen's Park, Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, San Juan Jabloteh, Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed, Prison Ser­vice FC, Matu­ra Re-Unit­ed, Club San­do, Cunu­pia FC and De­fence Force, all bat­tling for a win­ner's cheque of $250,000, as well as $125,000 and $75,000 for sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly.

Di­vi­sion II com­pris­es Harlem Strik­ers, UTT, Moru­ga FC, Po­lice FC, Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed, Mara­bel­la Fam­i­ly Cri­sis Cen­tre, RSSR FC, Bethel Unit­ed, Club San­do Up­ris­ing Youths, San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants, Erin FC and De­porti­vo PF, is a com­bined team from the Point Fortin foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion held ear­li­er this year. They will be com­pet­ing for $100,000, $65,000 and $35,000 as the top three prizes.

Har­ford said as or­gan­is­ers they have tak­en out an in­sur­ance pol­i­cy which will cov­er play­ers for in­juries and death in the sum of $5,000 (in­jury) and $10,000 (death) to go to next of kin. The pol­i­cy will al­so cov­er team of­fi­cials.

He al­so lashed out at North East Stars Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Di­rec­tor Michael Awai for claims there is no se­cu­ri­ty for play­ers, say­ing it is stan­dard pro­ce­dure in foot­ball that the home team is re­spon­si­ble for se­cu­ri­ty.

The league is set to be a one-round com­pe­ti­tion but could go for two rounds if monies promised to clubs by the gov­ern­ment for the com­ing T-League lat­er this year, does not come.

"The As­cen­sion League has its birth through this des­per­ate need as you are aware, the promised fund­ing from the gov­ern­ment has not yet ma­te­ri­alised to af­ford the start of the TT Pro League sea­son, and the ex­pect­ed funds from the FI­FA, has al­so not yet ma­te­ri­alised, so we have reached out to the As­cen­sion peo­ple and they have ac­cept­ed," Har­ford said.

Richard Piper, the tour­na­ment di­rec­tor said, "The tour­na­ment will mir­ror the op­er­a­tions of the T-League when it gets start­ed. As part of the sanc­tion of the TTFA we had to have an in­dem­ni­ty clause that says they are not go­ing to be re­spon­si­ble for any­thing per­tain­ing to this tour­na­ment, and we gave them the as­sur­ance that this will not hap­pen."

Ac­cord­ing to Piper, an­oth­er in­no­v­a­tive as­pect of the tour­na­ment is that there is no reg­is­tra­tion fee. Teams will al­so re­ceive ap­pear­ance fees of $2,000 for Di­vi­sion I and $1,000 for Di­vi­sion II for each match, and Flow will pro­vide tele­vi­sion cov­er­age of match­es which will be aired as a pack­age on any giv­en day in the week.

Mean­while, Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, which has spent in ex­cess of $5 mil­lion to up­grade its fa­cil­i­ty at Phase Two La Hor­quet­ta, has re­quest­ed that its match­es played there.

RELATED NEWS

$2.3m for football tournament.
By Joel Bailey (Newsday).

BOOTS of local footballers will no longer be collecting dust as $2.3 million will be pumped into the Ascension Invitational Tournament that will kick off tomorrow featuring 24 teams.

Pro League and Super League teams will be involved in the league with 12 teams playing in division one along with the same number of teams in division two. The announcement was made at The Hotel Normandie in St Ann’s, yesterday. No football has been held locally since December 2018.

Ascension is a group of business people using the league as a test for a new line of sporting apparel, which will be introduced to T&T and the Caribbean later this year.

The tournament will be played in a round robin format from tomorrow until September 21.

Two matches will be held tomorrow in division one with Guaya Utd playing Police FC, at Guaya Recreation Ground, from 4 pm and FC Santa Rosa FC battling QPCC, at Arima Velodrome, from 8 pm.

The division one winners will walk away with $250,000, second place will get $125,000 and the third place finishers will cop $75,000. In division two, the champions will be $100,000 richer, the runner up will earn $65,000 and the third place finishers will get $35,000. An appearance fee of $2,000 would be given to each team for each game that they play in division one and $1,000 in division two.

The teams competing in division one will be Guaya United FC, Police FC, FC Santa Rosa, QPCC, Terminix La Horquetta Rangers FC, San Juan Jabloteh, Caledonia AIA, Prison Service FC, Matura Reunited FC, Club Sando FC, Cunupia FC and Defence Force FC.

Lining up in division two will be Deportivo PF, Harlem Strikers, UTT, Moruga FC, Police FC, Petit Valley/Diego Martin Utd, Marabella Family Crisis Centre, RSSR FC, Bethel Utd, Club Sando Uprising Youths, San Fernando Giants and Erin FC.

W Connection, Central FC and North East Stars are the notable clubs that are not competing in the league.

A 30-minute television programme will be produced which delivers highlights of the tournament every week that will be aired on Flow and as such the tournament would be used to expose T&T football internationally.

The tournament director is Richard Piper and marketing director of All Sports Promotions Anthony Harford, said his company has helped with registration and other administrative matters in the league.

The tournament is sanctioned by the TT Football Association.

Ascension Invitational Tournament

Division One - Round One fixtures

(Fri 12 Jul)

Guaya Utd v Police FC, 6pm, Guaya Recreation Ground;
FC Santa Rosa v QPCC, 8pm, Arima Velodrome;

(Sat 13 Jul)

Morvant Caledonia Utd v Prison Services, 6pm, Hasely Crawford Stadium training ground;
Matura Re-United v Club Sando, 4pm, Matura Recreation Ground;

(Sun 14 Jul)

Cunupia FC v Defence Force FC, 3.30pm, Larry Gomes Stadium.

Videos

Wired868TV: Play Ascension football tournament

SPORT: Ascension Football League Kicks Off On Friday

asylumseeker:
How could a company that is desirous of entering a market be positioned as "unknown"? Really?

Flex:

--- Quote from: asylumseeker on July 11, 2019, 05:47:31 AM ---How could a company that is desirous of entering a market be positioned as "unknown"? Really?

--- End quote ---

 :rotfl:

Only in T&T... maybe Jack Warner sponsored it.....

maxg:

--- Quote from: Flex on July 12, 2019, 12:30:37 AM ---
--- Quote from: asylumseeker on July 11, 2019, 05:47:31 AM ---How could a company that is desirous of entering a market be positioned as "unknown"? Really?

--- End quote ---

 :rotfl:

Only in T&T... maybe Jack Warner sponsored it.....





--- End quote ---
When time to pay the bills, everybody will be hoping some unknown entity steps-up.. that is transparency in action, so transparent, almost invisible..   ;)  laawwd

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