Gimme five!
JPL clubs urge JFF to institute additional substitutes ahead of start of season
Published:Saturday | May 22, 2021 | 12:11 AMRobert Bailey/Gleaner Writer
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Humble Lion head coach Andrew Price and Harbour View General Manager Clyde Jureidini are urging the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) to consider instituting five substitutions instead of the regular three for the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) this...
Humble Lion head coach Andrew Price and Harbour View General Manager Clyde Jureidini are urging the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) to consider instituting five substitutions instead of the regular three for the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) this season.
The JPL, which begins on June 26, will be returning from a 15-month halt because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2019-20 JPL season was ruled null and void by the JFF in May last year.
Price told The Gleaner that five substitutions per game would help to ease the burden on players and lessen the likelihood of injury during the four-month competition.
“Just starting back a league after a year and half and just like other countries have done, we have to put in a best practice of having at least five substitutions so that we don’t run the players into the ground,” he said. “The more rotations you have and substitutions you have, at least you can pace all the players, but if you don’t have multiple substitutions, you are going to run yourself into problems and you are going to face a lot of injuries.”
A number of competitions across Europe, including the English Premier League, the Italian Serie A, the German Bundesliga, and Spain’s LaLiga, the UEFA Champions League, and Europa League instituted the five substitutions rule temporarily last year.
FIVE SUBS EASE WORKLOAD
Jureidini says many JPL teams have not been training during the pandemic and having five substitutions during competition will ease their workload.
“This is one of things that I would request and recommend that we have, like international football, at least five substitutions because nobody would be fully prepared, or is fit enough to play back-to-back competitively as nobody wants injuries,” Jureidini said. “I would also like us to extend the roster so that you have more people on the bench and I would like to see what times the games are because if they are earlier in the day, when the sun the is hot, then I would also suggest, as one of the protocols, that you have a break midway the first half and a break midway the second half so that people can rehydrate and refresh.”
When contacted yesterday, JFF Competitions Committee Chairman Gregory Daley said the five substitutions rule is being reviewed and a decision on it will be made before the competition begins.
“I think that by late next week we can definitively say yes or no,” he said.