Traditional giant Agricola Red Triangle has confirmed their intention of withdrawing from the East Bank Demerara Football Association (EBDFA) senior men’s league, citing a lack of prize money as the main reason for their looming exodus.
This was confirmed by head-coach Colin John during an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport. According to John, “The club will pull out of the league because we can’t play for free and we were already told of the prize money and now we are being told the association don’t have money for prizes. They said they have some money but they didn’t say how much. They basically want to restart the league but can’t guarantee prize money which we were already told about in the rules at the start of the league. The team is going to pull out because of this, the club wants a guarantee.”
The tournament, which has been suspended for several weeks, is divided into two groups. Presently, Agricola are comfortably perched atop group-B with a record of seven wins and one draw.
He added, “The issue is that when they started on the East Bank, they just put a prize money in the rules of the tournament, they put over a million dollars. It was $500,000 for 1st, $400,000 for second, $200,000 for 3rd and $100,000 for 4th. The tournament just stopped and then I went to a meeting two nights ago with the EBFA President and executives and some coaches. In the meeting they wanted to restart the tournament but there is no sponsorship for the tournament and all these games have been played, and there is no guarantee at the moment of prize money.”
Meanwhile, Orin Angoy, President of the EBDFA, disclosed, “At the beginning of the tournament we were using the rules from a previous tournament which had in the rules prize money stipulated. It was subsequently explained that this part of the rules which had the prize money was a mistake, this was explained to them before the tournament started. Where we flawed was that we had to get back to them [clubs] and tell them about the [new] prize money which we didn’t, we never got back them. We never actually set a prize money but we are working on it.
“The meeting we had two days ago at the NDC in Providence was to discuss the whole scenario around the prize money but we never came to a final decision simply because only three clubs were represented. We are trying to put together the prizes.”
Asked about the amount of financial assistance that was provided by the GFF to aid in the staging of the tournament, Anjoy said, “I don’t recall, to the best of my knowledge, yes they gave us money, but I can’t remember the amount.
“They [Agricola Red Triangle] haven’t come forth to me with pulling out of the event, but it would be an unfortunate outcome.”
