Hubert Lawrence | Time to consider name change for the Champions Cup?

No one should begrudge St Catherine High School their first hold on a schoolboy football title. With experienced Anthony Patrick at the helm, the conquerors always find their way out of the first round and into consideration.

Perhaps, this success will spur them on. After all, the Patrick-coached Bridgeport teams of 2001 and 2006 are the only ones from the big parish to win the Manning Cup.

St Catherine have earned the right to dream. When training camp begins in the summer of 2020 at St John’s Road, Spanish Town, work and prayer will begin in earnest.

History will list St Catherine High alongside the 54 other winners of the Walker Cup but in real terms, we now have a different tournament. In the present guise, the Walker Cup and the rural equivalent, the Ben Francis Knockout are consolation tournaments for schools eliminated early from the Manning Cup and the daCosta Cup respectively. Until the changes made last season, these trophies were part of coveted triple crowns sought by the best teams in the nation.

For top Corporate Area teams, the triple has long been Manning Cup – Walker Cup – Olivier Shield and rural area schools have chased the daCosta Cup – Ben Francis – Olivier Shield triple for decades. In addition to the downgrade of the Walker and Ben Francis tournaments into consolation tournaments, the reorganisation has revised the time-honoured triple. Now the Champions Cup is squarely in the mix.

In time, this six year-old tournament could become the most important schoolboy football competition. Simply put, it pits the best of the best, eight Corporate Area teams and eight rural teams, against each other in a way that the one-game Olivier Shield doesn’t do with its one-match clash between the Manning Cup winner and the daCosta Cup victor.

The Champions Cup could grow in the future and become the launching pad for a truly national schoolboy football competition. A day may come when parish champions will meet in a super Champions Cup to decide which school has the best football team in Jamaica each season.

If the consolation tournaments continue, a name change is needed. Herbert ‘Chicken’ Walker and Colonel Ben Francis have important trophies named in their honour because of their sterling service to high-school sport. To maintain respect, the Champions Cup should become the Walker/Francis Cup for 2020.

Accordingly, the consolation tournaments will need new names.

There are many who would prefer the restoration of the Walker and Ben Francis tournaments to their time-honoured formats. Allied to that, I can see a Challenge Cup for both rural and urban teams that miss the cut in the Manning and daCosta Cups. That would mimic the Champions Cup.

New reality

Whatever format is chosen, another reality has emerged. The annual October rainy season and the growth in the number of entrants have left the Christmas term overflowing with football fixtures.

In the old days, the existing schedule structure was fine. For many years, the Manning Cup scarcely had more than a dozen teams, and the daCosta Cup was of similar size. Now the numbers run to approximately 90 daCosta Cup teams and 40 Manning Cup teams.

Until global warming moves the rainy season, which annually causes fixture pile-ups, the only option is to move some of the season into the Easter Term. In this construct, the Champions Cup would move to Friday nights in January.

That will further reduce the fixture congestion seen so often and give the footballers more reason to attend to schoolwork, since sports eligibility for Easter term rests on academic performance in the Christmas term.

However, if the current consolation tournaments persist, some name changes are recommended.

Hubert Lawarence has scrutinised local and international athletics since 1980.