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Denham Town admit to Manning Cup foul-up
September 12, 2023
Denham Town High School coach, Marvin Tate, admits that the foul-up that prevented their Manning Cup schoolboy football encounter with Eltham High at the Edward Seaga Sports Complex yesterday from playing was an error on their part.
Hosts Denham Town forfeited the three points to Eltham after the former failed to produce a match card for their Group C encounter, which Tate attributes to difficulty downloading and printing the document.
"ISSA (Inter Sports Secondary Association) has taken on a new process of how the match cards are generated. As a result of that, we weren't able to present the match cards at the specified time.
"It was sent to my phone, but the referees said they couldn't honour it because they needed a printed copy. We are at fault because we weren't able to download and print the match card," Tate stated.
ISSA rules dictate the situation warrants Eltham being rewarded the three points and a 3-0 margin win, and coach Tate contends that it is a continuation of their unfortunate build-up to the start of the season.
"We are disappointed, but we've been having that (so far) this season. It hasn't been a smooth road for us as a team. We didn't even have a field to train on. Outside of that, we started on the asphalt in the school back in July. These guys are tough young men. They understand what hardship is, and I'm sure they'll recover from this," Tate added.
His counterpart, Gregory Allen, shared that his players were raring to showcase their talent in the competition, as Eltham have not participated for the past four years.
"We haven't played Manning Cup football since 2019, so I'm pretty sure the players were eager to go. We have to motivate our players. We have to get back to the training ground for our game on Thursday. We didn't play, so we have to get things right on the rectangular surface," Allen said.
Ewan Scott, competitions coordinator at ISSA, argued that clear instructions were given to all the participating teams. Scott added that teams were also asked to do a test run of the system before the start of the new football season.
"The process shouldn't be difficult as we've sent out instructions to the coaches and the teams while asking them before the season to check and ensure that they can generate their match card because no written cards will be accepted on match days," Scott proclaimed.
