Ryon Jones, Gleaner Writer

The Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) competitions director, George Forbes, thinks rural area football is much better supported than urban area football.

He is of the opinion that rural area football teams get 10 times the support their urban area counterparts receive.

"The daCosta Cup is actually where we make the money, we don't make any money in Manning Cup," Forbes said. "Many persons in Kingston, when it comes to supporting football and supporting the youngsters who they love so much, they do not want to pay their money to come out and watch them," he added.

Forbes said the just-concluded season was a very good one.

"I think we have had a very good season. We played over 800 games and we had probably about eight or 10 incidents. I think that is good, considering that we are living in a very, very violent and somewhat aggressive society. So I think, all, in all we are satisfied that we did the best in the execution of our duties and we are quite satisfied with what we have done."

The greatest challenge during the schoolboy football season - the Manning Cup, daCosta Cup, Walker Cup, Ben Francis and Olivier Shield - was that of finding suitable venues.

Most Manning Cup second-round matches were played at Constant Spring Sports Complex, a venue where there were some problems with spectators.

Price of security

In the rural areas, some schools were reluctant to play at venues where they thought their opponents had a 'home' advantage.

Security accounted for a significant amount of the expense incurred by ISSA during the schoolboy football season.

"In previous years, we could have asked the security forces to come out and help, now we have to pay them," Forbes said. "For example, at Constant Spring our security cost is four times the amount of money we make at the gate. To beef up security we had to go to the police high command or the divisional head quarters and get their police, and it cost a pretty penny," he added.

The three-year sponsorship deal with Pepsi and Digicel, who are the two major sponsors, and the two secondary sponsors, KFC and Scotiabank, has expired but Forbes is confident they will all be back on board.

"Without the sponsors no schoolboy football could happen in this country, and all of them have indicated an interest to be back on board."

For next season, the competitions director wants the format of the competition to be changed.

"We still want to do it, and if the general population of ISSA decides that they want it to happen that's the way we are going to go," Forbes said. "We want to have a two-tier system where a team is not beaten 15-0 and 16-0. We want to have parity, teams of like quality play among each other, and those who don't have great quality play among themselves," he concluded.