 I choose football because my brother is pushing me because there are the two most important players right now to me. As a young brother, I hope that I can follow them in their footsteps and become as good as them, or even better. This season, I hope that we can do badly title. As captain, I would love to do badly title for my brother and for the school and for the principal. I motivate myself by always saying, work hard and to keep more of that team. Mentally, I see that everything that we do in training is for a purpose and I also tell the players that it will be great to become successful. Let's never give up and keep striving. In the next two to three years, I would love to be in the team. I hope that we can do badly title for my brother and for the school and for the principal. This season, we hope that we can do badly title. As captain, I would love to do badly title for my brother and for the principal. Let's never give up and keep striving. In the next two to three years, I would love to be in the university with my brother as well and just continue playing football until I really get opportunity to play table tennis. From my young age, my mother brought me into football so I've been playing football for about 13 years to date. Every day I see my mom putting in all the effort, time, sacrifice, blood sweat. It motivates me a lot and I feel even in my class, school work, everything I do, I do it for. I take my mom's advice and always put school work face on my off time. I tried to maintain I was in class, I was in lessons and I was on the field. Well, I wish that either play for a football club or attend a university in the United States or in Europe. No matter what you do, never give up. Yeah, you just heard there from the captain of presentation, College San Fernando Barclay and midfielder Clement, unfortunately for them, they are out of contention for the Trinidad and Tobago secondary schools football league title as they sit sixth on 25 points, nine points behind the leaders Fatima College, Fatima Steam Road, Trinity East 4-0 in round 13 to maintain their five point lead atop the standings. Let's check in now on some other results of the round. QRC beaten 4-1 by Naparima College, St. Antoni's College beaten 1-0 by presentation, St. Fernando, Fatima 4-0 over Trinity East, as we said, Chaguan is north and space side 1-1, Arima North 4-0 over Bishops High, St. Benedict's 8-0 over Pleasantville secondary, Malik's secondary, 5-1 over East Mukerapu and San Juan North, they were 4-1 winners over St. Mary's College. Our resident football analyst Brent Sancho has been covering the league and he joins us now. Brent, one more win for Fatima and they will have their first ever SSFL title in division one and I guess that would make two of Trinidad and Tobago's biggest sports stars who are former Fatima College students, Bran Lara and Atto Bolden Happy. Yeah, and I might join Aaron Roberts as well because he's at every single game. You succeeded him as sports minister, didn't you? Yeah, I succeeded him as sports minister but I went to Trinity College in Malik and we've not done too well, obviously Malik is starting to pick up but look, you can't blame Fatima because what they've done, their body of work throughout the season certainly deserves them the title. They've been consistent in what they do, they've stuck to that map that they've drawn out from the beginning of the season, that blueprint, they've not wavered from it. Yes, they've had some bumps in the road, minor ones, of course, one loss against Presentation College and a draw as well throughout the season but buying large what they've been able to do is be consistent. There's no star players, it's just a hard-working team that grasps well for each other and understands their role and function and they've been very good at that throughout the season despite the fact that there's been some very good teams that challenge them throughout but they're able to get the right results every Wednesday and Saturday and that's why they're top of the table and that's why they're playing a game on Saturday that possibly may see them crown champions. Yeah, and what would have taken them so long for this particular title because it's a school with good sports history overall? I think the time because of other schools really, I think that when you looked at the Sheva Boys dynasty that they had, you look back at Naparimo College under Angus Eve and you look at those sorts of schools, it was always going to be difficult for Fatima College, they've always produced good teams. Yes, being consistent, yes, but I think those other teams were what I would consider super teams and they've now come into this year's edition of the SSFL, again, consistency but what we don't have this season necessarily is a super team. Some will not let the table for most of the season but they were a team that did not have the depth and once they started to pick up injuries, so the results started to drop and we saw that Naparimo College was not consistent as they should have been because they do have a good cadre of players, they as well struggle as well. So for Fatima College, you have to give them credit. They have not taken the foot off the pedal once so far this season. They've been able to be through and buy and buy out the best team we've seen football wise and that's the reason why, as I said, they have this opportunity that has been afforded to them. Yeah, Brent, interestingly, so I think the quality of schoolboy football in Jamaica, for example, this season, last season, well, let me just say, since COVID is definitely not as good as it was in the years leading up to COVID, what is the overall quality of the SSFL like this season, you would say? I would say it's a drop-off in quality from an individual perspective. They were a lot better individual players last season and seasons before. I think this season you don't really see that big production of individuals, player and talent that you normally see in schoolboy football. One or two players have really captured the eye and the imagination. You have Qashy and Swing from San Juan North for, of course, Fatima College. They have the young player at the back, William Street and Williams. But in terms of that overwhelming river bursting talent that we normally see individual talent, we haven't seen that this year. But from a team perspective, we've seen some good team football. Arima North Secondary is well-coached, well-oiled machine training ecologies. I've done well as a unit. They did have the fluctuation results, Malik Secondary. Again, another team that's been looking quite solid in what they do. So from that perspective, yes, it's a bit better. But from the individual perspective, I think it's dropped a bit. Given that you say that the quality individually has dropped but you still have quality teams, good team football, what is that saying about the quality of the coaching at the high school level? I think that the high school level coaching is quite good. It's a quite good number of young coaches that know coaching the league, that could, of course, relate to the young players. I did mention, of course, Arima North and Arima College with Travis Moreno, former captain at youth level and senior team level for Trinidad and Tobago. He's ably assisted by Anthony Sherwood, another stalwart in football in Trinidad and Tobago and they've been able to impart their knowledge onto their team. Of course Fatima College coached by Hudson Charles and, of course, have a list of players in Aronson, Mary's College has Pona Hislap, brother of Shaka Hislap Aron. So I think from a coaching perspective, there's some good minds, some good individuals that understand the game and can pass that knowledge onto the players from a tactical team perspective. I think from an individual perspective, it's dropped off simply because I don't feel that these kids play enough football. I think when the season's over last year for the secondary school, not many of those kids went on to play football outside of that. And you can see it. And regardless of the players that did that, the Qashis that played in the Premier League for Trinidad and Tobago, of course the Lindell Sweeney that played in the TT Premier League, those players shown true because they played football throughout the year and they were able to, obviously, keep their skill level, their talent level at a certain level. How do you get more players to play more football throughout the year and not just in the SSFL and once that's done, that's it? I think it's going to happen organically this season because I feel with the financial struggles that some of the clubs have at the TT Premier League level, they're going to have to rely on young players. They're going to have to blend young talent. And I think once that starts to happen, the players that are coming out, that still is in school, that still have a year or two years left in school football, I think they're the ones that are going to shine through. So I do feel from an organic perspective that's what's going to happen. Before Ricardo, in Trinidad and Tobago, we had the Fluid Pro League. We had all these different competitions that took place in the months of January, February, March, April. We don't have that anymore here on the island. So players go missing for that period of time and as you know, whether it's an academy footballer and world footballer, anywhere around the world, they play football day in, day out 365 days a year. And that's very important for growth and development of a young player. Yeah, what about the lower age group high school competitions, Brent? I mean, let's take for example in Jamaica where you have U-14, U-16s, and then you matriculate into the under 19 or under 20 competition, which is the Manning and the Costa Cop here, the SSFL division won there. But what about the lower age group competitions? Well, that's still dominated by the teams that you see at the top half of the table. In South Trinidad, it's in Benedict's and Nakarimo College dominate at the U-14 and U-16 level. Fatima College has won the national title in all youth age groups last season, which tells you the type of work that they're doing structurally from an organizational level and develop players to move up through the different age group categories and in the east it's the same and normal culprits that you see at the league. So the teams that are at the top have been doing well because they have very good youth programs bringing them up. I must say, Ricardo, the league in Trinidad here has really gone down to the half and a half knots. And I say that to say that the programs that are doing well have one thing in common they have a very vibrant Old Boys Association, a very vibrant Alumni Association that's heavily involved in the sporting side of things and because of that they're able to get the necessary resources to continue doing well season after season after season. It's unfortunate because you can see the teams at the lower down struggle because they don't have that vibrancy at the alumni level, but the teams that are doing very well have that in common. Yeah, just in 20 seconds Brent because I heard you mentioned Hudson Charles just now who is coaching Fatima College. He had played school football, didn't he for East Mukerapu along with other big names like Angus Yves and Cornell Glenn. Somehow I seem to remember them having a good start to the season East Mukerapu maybe the first two or three rounds but they've just gone backwards. What's gone wrong with them? Yeah, they've fallen off a bit. I think defensively they look a bit short in what they're trying to do. Back to resources, Coach Dale Saunders is an excellent coach, good youth coach of course a former national team player he has to stop, but again I go back to the Fat Lands, the resources you can tell when you look at that East Mukerapu team show up for games, they're lacking that stuff in that, that entirety that you need to have. They've had a couple injuries as well lands and they seem to be dipping in form at the wrong time in the season of course when the Coca-Cola intercom to come up, which is a knockout phase of it you just wonder if they can turn things around in time for that start of that competition. Alright Brent, we're going to leave it there we'll keep in touch with SSFL in the coming weeks as Fatima closing on the title and we look forward to talking to you on that again soon. Alright guys, have a great one. Okay, coming up after the break we still talk youth football too because the Mount Pleasant Football Academy in St Anne in Jamaica doing great things and we're going to hear a lot more about that after the break.