Manning’s on track for schoolboy football season with new-look team

Manning’s School head coach Patrick Graham is embracing the challenge of rebuilding as the team prepares for the upcoming Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) football season, after losing eight players from last year’s squad.

With several new faces expected in the lineup, Graham says conditioning is on track with competition set to begin in two to three weeks.

“Well, we always try to give it our best. We have a fairly new team, fairly new in the sense that we lost roughly about eight players for various reasons. It is a new bunch going in, so we will give it our best,” said Graham.

“Once we take part in a competition, we always encourage our youngsters to give it their best. The realistic goal this time around is the quarterfinals,” Graham said about his expectations.

In the upcoming season, teams have been seeded in the daCosta and Manning Cup league format competitions for the first time. The unseeded teams will battle it out in the first round, with the top ones moving on to the second round, where the seeded teams will then join the action.

All teams in the rural daCosta Cup and Corporate Area Manning Cup will be involved in both the Ben Francis KO and Walker Cup KO competitions, respectively.

In recent years, only the eight losing teams in the round of 16 were eligible to challenge for the knockout trophies.

The transition to a new format presents both challenges and opportunities. While changes often cause initial hiccups, Graham said the new structure allows for better planning during training sessions.

“Whenever there is change, it always encounters hiccups. Changes are inevitable, so the new format, we will just have to give it a chance and see how things turn out in the end. What this does is that it gives you that opportunity to plan your periodisation more than anything else, so it is how you use your sessions really,” Graham told STAR Sports.

Additionally, he noted that with the new changes, the daCosta Cup is expected to be highly competitive from day one, requiring teams to perform at their highest level immediately.

“It will be highly competitive. From day one, you have to get your A game on. It is definitely tough, considering that also, you will start early, it means that you will have more games.”

Last season, Manning’s, after being knocked out of the daCosta Cup round of 16, qualified to the Ben Francis but were later eliminated, on penalties, by defending champions Clarendon College in the semi-finals..

As for pre-season preparations, Graham said the team is progressing well with conditioning meeting the expected standards.

“We are not 100 per cent there. We have another few weeks for the competition so we are where we want to be at this time,” said Graham.

Graham stated that his main task now is to get the young players to focus on the task ahead.

“Once they get that opportunity to play football, they will be highly motivated, the game itself is a motivator. The issue really is to get them really focused on the game itself, so they will be ready once the competition starts,” added Graham.

Still on the hunt for a domestic title, the 288-year-old Manning’s first and only time in the final of the daCosta Cup came in 2022 when they were defeated by Garvey Maceo High.