Wellington explains crowd at Stadium East for Manning, Walker Cup finals
Published:Thursday | January 27, 2022 | 12:05 AMDaniel Wheeler/Staff Reporter
INTER-SECONDARY SCHOOLS Sports Association (ISSA) President Keith Wellington has explained the reason fans were seen during Manning and Walker Cup finals at the Stadium East field on the weekend.
Questions about the protocols in place for the finals arose when the televised event was also apparently watched by a number of fans physically in the stands.
With the Ministry of Local Government banning fans from the National Stadium for Jamaica’s World Cup qualifiers tomorrow against Mexico, and next Wednesday against Costa Rica, as well as any other sporting event allowed to take place in the first part of this year, there were those who asked, what is different about schoolboy football?
A series between Ireland and England at Sabina Park also went without fans this month.
While the schoolboy football season was initially approved with no fans in attendance, the Government granted ISSA approval in December for a maximum of 25 fully vaccinated persons per school to attend the quarter-final games onwards.
Wellington said that approval was the basis on which they had hoped to allow the general public to watch matches this month.
MEMORABLE OCCASION
“They (the Government) did support us keeping the 25 patrons per school, and I think that contributed to the atmosphere. And I’m sure those persons who were privileged to be here would consider it a memorable occasion for them,” Wellington told The Gleaner.
“It’s just unfortunate that we were not able to maintain the decrease in COVID-19 cases over the Christmas into January, which would have allowed us to have more people in the stands. We hope that things will improve and we get back to some level of normalcy.”
The Stadium East double-header seemed to have had more people than the allocation the Government had suggested should be there. However, Wellington explained the situation.
According to the ISSA boss, a number of St Catherine High School and Kingston Technical High School supporters, the teams which contested the 1 p.m. Walker Cup final, stayed to watch the Manning Cup final between Kingston College and Jamaica College. Those fans were joined by the combined fans of the teams in the Manning Cup final.
Wellingston also added another explanation, pointing to the number of working persons who were also caught by the cameras.
“We would have had four schools participating. People have to recognise that for an event like this, for you to execute, it takes dozens of persons,” Wellington said.
“When you think about the production crew, events management crew, you are going to add a few more persons in [the count]. It’s not like everybody here were spectators, there were persons here actually working.”