KSAFA seeks help for young ballers

Wayne Shaw, president of the Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA), said his administration is urgently seeking sponsorship for this year’s staging of its Under-15 competition.

Shaw told STAR Sports that his association have been trying very hard to get a sponsor for the competition, which kicked last weekend, but they are yet to receive a response.  

“I am very disappointed that we haven’t been able to secure sponsorship for this competition,” said Shaw. 

“The youth competition is very important to the development of football in Jamaica and we get the support for the senior competitions, but it always a struggle to get sponsorship for the youth competitions. 

“We have sent out a lot of letters to companies asking for sponsorship, but the responses have not been good so far. But this competition is a compulsory competition and so we have to play it and so we decided to start it without a sponsor,” Shaw said.

FURTHER DEBT

According to Shaw, the total cost to stage this year’s competition is $4 million. And being forced to fork out that kind of money to run the competition will put a strain on the finances of the organisation.

“This is going to put KSAFA in further debt with a sponsor for this competition, but we are hoping that within the next two-weeks that somebody will come on board and assist us.

"Last year, we played this competition with an associated sponsors Nestle, but we haven’t been able to get a sponsor this year.

“These youth are the future and if we are talking about World 2026, which will be held in the CONCACAF, then these are the youths who we should be investing now,” he said.

Harbour View are the defending Under-15 champions.