A misunderstanding between the co-ordinator of the Antigua & Barbuda Football Association’s (ABFA) Youth Development Programme, Micah Samuel, and security officials at Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Grounds (SVRCG) forced the cancellation of the ABFA’s Under-13 Boys development league final on Wednesday.
SAP and Bassa were scheduled to appear in the 20-minute final at 4:15 pm, 30 minutes before the friendly international between the senior national men’s side of Antigua & Barbuda and Trinidad and Tobago.
Although the venue was already prepared to host the encounter, the match was postponed after Samuel was refused entry into the stadium.
According to Samuel, he did not have the required entry pass and the security official refused to grant him entry into the stadium.
Chairman of the ABFA’s Youth Development Committee Fernando Abraham, who was performing managerial duties with the senior national team at the time, said he is not totally clear as to what transpired and led to the postponement of the final.
“Micah should be the one explaining the situation because he told me he had an unfortunate situation with the security people, which I was going to look into but he told me he had already left that area so it doesn’t make sense,” Abraham said.
“I will need to speak to Micah some more because when he called me on Wednesday afternoon, I was in the heart of getting things prepared for my senior team so I didn’t have a detailed conversation with him pertaining to that.
“I can not tell you exactly what happened, he briefly made some comments to me and I will have to wait until he comes back to me with some more details before I can move forward with that.”
Abraham said he is now exploring the possibilities of having the final played as soon as possible, which could be as early as Sunday at Antigua Recreation Ground (ARG).
“I’ll try and get the match played as soon as possible, but I can’t just say it will happen tomorrow or the day after. I will have to look at it and plan it properly so that it can be done and everybody happy about the whole thing,” Abraham said.
“I know there are some matches that are due to be played on Sunday at the ARG. I don’t know if I can slip it in at any time but I’ll check that out to see if it’s possible.”
Twenty teams participated in this year’s ABFA Under-13 development league.
(Source http://www.antiguaobserver.com/?p=71979)
