THE INTER-SECONDARY Schools Sports Association is now concerned with the complicity of schools in the use of ineligible players in this season’s ISSA/WATA daCosta and ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup competitions.
Yesterday, ISSA announced the suspension of Kellits High School from the daCosta Cup and Innswood High School from the Manning Cup after they were found to be using ineligible players during their campaigns.
The suspensions, following a meeting on Friday, indicated that ISSA would be continuing its probe in the situation with a view of sanctioning all complicit parties.
President of the governing body, Keith Wellington, while speaking with The Sunday Gleaner, said the schools used one ineligible player each and that the players used the identity of other players to participate in their schools’ fixtures.
“In both cases, neither of the players was registered with ISSA to participate, and in both cases, they used the identity of other players who were registered,” revealed Wellington.
“Also, in both cases they would have been ineligible to participate even if they had attempted to use their own identities,” said a concerned Wellington.
The grievous nature of the incidents, Wellington said, required harsher sanctions than had been employed previously this season in the cases of Hydel High School, who used more than the quota of transfer students in a game, or Jamaica College, who used a goalkeeper who should have had to sit out the season but wasn’t thought to have fit that criteria, and William Knibb, who used a player who should have been suspended on account of an accumulation of yellow cards.
All those cases resulted in a docking of three points and three goals from the offending game.
“For us at ISSA, we clearly state that where it shows that a player is ineligible in a game, points are deducted and we have the option of additional punishment. In this case, we felt that this matter was egregious and tantamount to fraud, so we felt that we had to take drastic action against the schools. We also felt that the schools, or personnel from the school, must have been complicit in this matter,” said Wellington.
Investigations, Wellington explained, are being conducted to identify other examples where breaches of the rules took place as the body makes every attempt to rid the competition of any form of insidiousness.
“We are continuing our investigations and where we identify any individual complicit in the matter we will take further actions,” he added.
Innswood participated from Zone E in the Manning Cup while Kellits participated from Zone H in the daCosta Cup.
Mona lead Manning Cup Zone E with 15 points from five games, with St Catherine on 12 and Norman Manley on six.
In Zone H of the daCosta Cup, Clarendon College have been perfect, amassing 18 points from their six games, while Edwin Allen are second on 15. Thompson Town is third on nine points, the same as fourth-place Lennon, who have a worse goal difference.
Wellington explained that going forward the games played and points earned by the two will be classified as null.
“The games that have been completed by those teams have been ruled null and void. This is because they haven’t completed two-thirds of their fixtures, so we can’t allocate points.”
Attempts to contact the schools have, so far, been unsuccessful.