THE INTER-SECONDARY School Sports Association (ISSA) certainly seems to have got caught between a rock and a hard place as it relates to a recent ruling which went the way of Jamaica College in an abandoned match against Wolmer's Boys at the Old Hope Road school last week.

The Heroes Circle team refused to continue the match, following instructions by the referee to do so, citing security concerns as a reason not to.

Of course, no association can stand for any team in the competition refusing to acknowledge instructions from a selected official, so the decision is pretty cut an dry, right? Well, not exactly.

Inadvertently, the association has now found itself in support of unruly fan conduct and rewarding a certain level of hooliganism not seen in the sport in recent years.

One cannot go against officials put in charge as they represent the association and the sport and a clear part of their mandate demands that they show sound judgement.

However, the problem remains that I am yet to be convinced that an attempt to restart the game after three major pitch invasions falls into the category of sound judgement.

No one was ejected

Following the fracas, there appeared to be no serious attempts to get crowds back behind the rope and no one was ejected from the ground. In fact, after the melee, spectators, obviously incensed by happenings on the pitch, continued to stand just inches away from the goal line.

There is no way that a match, televised or not, could be restarted in those circumstances. Conditions were so unsuitable that tempers continued to flare, post-game, with incensed Wolmer's players having to be restrained while the crowd, for its part, continued to follow the players on the pitch.

This was long after the referees had retreated to the changing room. These were scenes bad enough to make any serious fan of the game and a competition, which has been well-run over the last few years, thoroughly embarrassed.

Fan behaviour

While it is difficult to punish a Jamaica College team which, to be fair, stuck in to play excellent football for the entire game and deserved the points, it is difficult to reward the sort of fan behaviour which anyone would hate to see rear its ugly head in schoolboy or any sort of football.

The responsibility of any school is first and foremost to its students. It is a sacred responsibility given to the institution by parents who leave their children within its gates in the morning and expect to see them well when they return in the afternoon.

Health and well-being

While we all love football, fans, the media, administrators and sponsors included, any of us should freely admit, and without hesitation, that the health and well-being of the players, whom we will, perhaps, even look to for national representation, or, more important, students, come first.

Any coach, teacher or guardian who truly believes his or her students to be at risk and does nothing about it should consider another profession. Let's say that, hypothetically, an official had claimed to be intentionally injured by stampeding fans invading the pitch, would the game have continued one second longer? I think not.

Is it that the welfare of officials is more important than that of players? Is it that the entire incident will now go unpunished even if we are to claim that it was a bad decision by the Wolmer's team to not continue the game?

From this corner, it looks like a bad precedent to set.