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Montego Bay Complex for schoolboy openers

Published:Friday | August 26, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Carlo Redwood (centre), marketing manager of Pepsi-Cola Jamaica (bottlers of Gatorade), and Paula Pinnock-McLeod, sports sponsorship manager of Digicel, present Jamaica College vice-principal Rohan Wong with that school's Manning Cup jersey. Gatorade and Digicel will be co-title sponsors of this season's staging of the ISSA event.Gladstone Taylor/Photographer

Jermaine Lannaman, Gleaner Writer

The Montego Bay Sports Complex will be the host venue for the opening matches of this season's ISSA/ Gatorade/Digicel urban area Manning Cup and rural area daCosta Cup, as well as the final of the daCosta Cup.

The competitions, which are slated to get under way on Saturday, September 10, will see the venue which earlier this year staged the final stage of CONCACAF's FIFA Under-17 World Cup qualifiers playing host to a double-header.

In the first match, which is slated to begin at 2 p.m., defending daCosta Cup champions Rusea's High will take on Green Island, while at 4 p.m., reigning Manning Cup kingpins Jamaica College (JC) will tackle Camperdown High.

Rusea's defeated first-time finalists Lennon in the final last season to claim their ninth hold on the title, while Jamaica College defeated another first-time finalist, Waterford, to claim their 21st lien on the crown.

"In a bid to provide greater visibility to our sponsors, as well as offer somewhat a greater degree of comfort to spectators, we have decided to change the venue this year," said ISSA president, Dr Walton Small, at the launch of the competitions yesterday. The opening matches for high school football have, for a number of years, been held at Jarrett Park in Montego Bay.

The finals

The final of the daCosta Cup is scheduled for December 3, while the final of the Manning Cup, which is slated for its original venue, the National Stadium, is down to take place on November 26.

The launch, which saw presentations from title sponsors Pepsi-Cola Jamaica marketing manager, Carlo Redwood, and Digicel's sports sponsorship manager, Paula Pinnock-McLeod, as well as Ryan Silvera, marketing coordinator for associate sponsors Kentucky Fried Chicken, took place at the Terra Nova Hotel in Kingston.

There were also presentations from Jamaica Football Federation president, Captain Horace Burrell, vice-president of host broadcasters CVM Television, Ronnie Sutherland, and Richard Campbell, president of Caribbean Americas Soccer Association, organisers of the annual post-season regional all-schools championship in Florida, USA.

Meanwhile, in a bid to ease the close scheduling and frequency of matches in the Manning Cup, which is normally brought on by the seasonal inclement weather, an additional preliminary-round group has been added.

This brings the total number of groups to seven, with a total of 39 schools down to take part in the event.

A total of 78 schools are listed for the daCosta Cup, which will be divided in its usual 11 zones.

The winners of the Manning and daCosta Cup will each receive $180,000, the same as last year, while ISSA is to decide shortly whether or not the winners of the urban area Walker Cup knockout and the rural area Ben Francis Cup knockout will receive any prize money for their efforts.