Six new teams have joined last sea­son’s cham­pi­ons, the Harlem Strik­ers, and the 14 oth­er teams that con­test­ed Tier II of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, for a to­tal of 21 teams, which will kick off ac­tion on Sat­ur­day with two match­es at 4 pm. 

First-timers Sidey FC and Carn­bee/Mt Pleas­ant SC have now joined Bethel Unit­ed to make it three To­ba­go teams in the com­pe­ti­tion for the first time. In Trinidad, the oth­er new teams are Mal­abar Youngstars FC, Union Hall FC, Evo­lu­tion, and Cen­tral Soc­cer World, which played re­li­gious­ly in the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA) com­pe­ti­tion. 

Jame­son Rigues, Vice Pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, said the idea is to al­low more teams to play. “When COVID-19 hit back in 2020, it pre­vent­ed many teams from par­tic­i­pat­ing, so now that it has passed us, we want to al­low teams to play. How­ev­er, the se­lect­ed teams were made based on their ca­pa­bil­i­ty to meet the club li­cense re­quire­ments, which was im­por­tant for us,” Rigues ex­plained. 

Sat­ur­day’s ac­tion will be­gin with two match­es, the first be­ing a match-up be­tween Bethel and Sidey FC at the Mont­gomery Recre­ation Ground at 4 pm, while RSSR and Mal­abar Youngstars will tan­gle in the oth­er at the Mal­abar Recre­ation Ground at the same time. 

The teams will play in two groups; the first, Group 1, will com­prise the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, team Harlem Strik­ers, who will square off with T&T Po­lice FC on Sun­day at the An­cil El­cock Recre­ation Ground in Ca­roni from 4 pm. 

They have been joined in that group by 10 oth­er teams, name­ly Pris­ons Ser­vices FC, Mis­cel­la­neous Laven­tille, Si­day FC, Carn­bee/Mt Pleas­ant FC, Bethel Unit­ed, RSSR, Mal­abar Youngstars FC, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT). 

Group 2 fea­tures Matu­ra Re­Unit­ed, Union Hall FC, San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants, Ea­gles FC, Guaya Unit­ed FC, Club San­do, Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed, De­fence Force, Cen­tral Soc­cer­world, and Evo­lu­tion. 

From the group stage, the top three teams will ad­vance to form a Big Six Play-Off. 

Rigues and the par­ent foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion are cur­rent­ly in the process of pay­ing out prize mon­ey from the pre­vi­ous sea­son. Ac­cord­ing to Rigues, who was pres­i­dent of the T&T Su­per League, which tar­get­ed the sec­ond-tier league in lo­cal foot­ball, they have al­ready had com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the dif­fer­ent clubs to have the mon­ey owed paid off and a new com­pe­ti­tion start­ed. 

He said the prize struc­ture of $150,000 for the win­ner, $90,000 for the run­ner-up, and $60,000 for the third-place team is ex­pect­ed to re­main the same this sea­son, while pro­mo­tion and de­mo­tion to Tier 1 will be­gin next sea­son. 

Champs Harlem Strik­ers are hop­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend their ti­tle this sea­son mi­nus sev­er­al key play­ers who played with them last sea­son. Man­ag­er Gre­go­ry Mc­Sween said they have lost five key play­ers, in­clud­ing in­stru­men­tal strik­er Moses Jaikaran, cen­tral de­fend­er Jabari Ahing, among oth­ers, as well as coach De­vorn Jorsling, who was snapped up by the De­fence Force Tier 1 team. 

Jorsling has since been re­placed by Chris­t­ian Bap­tiste. Mc­Sween told Guardian Me­dia that this sea­son would not be an easy sea­son as the teams will be com­ing out to stop Harlem Strik­ers. “We have been in train­ing, and we have been work­ing hard, not on­ly to give a good ac­count of our­selves but to de­fend the ti­tle we won last sea­son,” Mc­Sween said.