Wellington keen on ISSA transfer quota

With the champions crowned and the teams off in their celebrations at the end of the 2019 ISSA schoolboy football season, coaches will already be looking at prospects for next season as each school aims to improve and come back stronger.

There will be a major difference in the schools’ selection process, however, as ISSA has made several amendments to its Eligibility Rules by introducing a transfer quota system. This, the governing body says, will limit the number of transfers that a school can make per sport.

ISSA president Keith Wellington said that this was done as a way to stop the mass recruiting of players and protect the academic interests of the students.

“We would have identified that schools have been taking advantage of our transfer rules by bringing in large numbers of student athletes to, basically, represent the school and build their championship teams and not necessarily for academic purposes,” Wellington said.

As a result of this decision, schools will only be allowed to register three transfer students for ISSA football competitions, with the mandatory one-year waiting period for all students, outside of sixth form, still in effect.

This, Wellington says, stands as a deterrent for mass recruiting.

“What we are attempting to do is to ensure that the playing field is level in terms of schools able to compete against each other, and schools who invest in their junior programmes will be confident their programmes will not be raided by other schools,” he said.

Manchester High head coach Vassell Reynolds is one coach who had concerns about this earlier this year.

“I think we need to be guided by some principles and that there should be a clear understanding between all stakeholders,” Reynolds said in a Gleaner article published on July 28. “There must be a clear policy in the manner in which it is done. I don’t believe in wide-scale recruitment or players moving all over the place as it seems like the players are goods or some sort of commodity to be handled.”

– Gregory Bryce