Eye-catching jerseys for schoolboy teams
Published:Saturday | August 27, 2022 | 12:10 AMLivingston Scott/Gleaner Writer
Footballers will wear some attractive jerseys during next season’s Manning Cup and daCosta Cup football competitions. The display was one of the features of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association’s (ISSA) schoolboy football launch on Wednesday.
The gathering was very impressed with the more than 25 designs that the schools (more than 100) will wear during the competition.
ISSA president Keith Wellington said each school will be provided with a supply of jersey replicas by gear provider Soccer Xpress and he hopes that fans will get their school gear and bring a new look to the competition.
“We want to see the schools rebuilding their support and so we have made arrangement with our gear sponsor to ensure that replicas of the school gear are provided for each school.
“We know that schoolboy football is probably the most supported football competition in Jamaica and we would like to see that matched by the commitment of the supporters and it being reflected in terms of their attire.
“We would like to see schools with big support to look in the stands and at least half the fans have on jerseys that the teams are playing in.
“We want to use that to build back some momentum in getting support for the various schools,” he said.
Meanwhile, with the competing teams in the Manning Cup showing an increase from 21 last year to 37 for 2022 and daCosta Cup from 52 to 81, Wellington noted variations to the format.
ROUNDS
Both competitions will have a home and away preliminary round, followed by a home and away seeded knockout round.
The top 16 seeded teams from the Manning Cup first round will play against each other for eight quarter-final spots.
For the daCosta Cup, 32 teams will play 16 home and away ties, with 16 teams going through to the quarter-final round.
However, previously for the daCosta Cup quarter-finals there were four groups of four teams with group winners qualifying for the semi-finals.
This year, the top two teams from each group will move on to two groups of four teams quarter-final round, similar to the Manning Cup, with the top two from each group qualifying for the semi-finals.
“You could not make a mistake in the quarter-final round, so you could remain unbeaten and not qualify,” Wellington noted of the previous format.
“We think this gives the best opportunities for the best teams to actually end up in the semi-finals,” he said.