Following the initially stage of a probe into the two “suspicious” Manning Cup games played recently, the ruling Inter-secondary School Sports Association (ISSA) says it cannot prove that anything untoward occurred, but the body remains unhappy over the whole affair.

On Wednesday, November 5, Jamaica College (JC) and Excelsior High recorded 16-0 and 12-0 victories over Denham Town and Holy Trinity High, respectively, as both fought for a place in the semi-final on goal difference.

George Forbes, ISSA’s competition director, told the Jamaica Observer that despite the initial findings that cleared the schools, the probe is still open.

“We got all the reports from all the parties involved. The referees, the schools and so on and when we looked at the reports… we could not come to a reasonable conclusion that anything untoward happened,” revealed Forbes.

“We are quite disappointed and we don’t think that both losing teams played to the best of their abilities. The probe continues and we will not close it, but at this time there is no evidence to substantiate that anything untoward happen and that’s where we are at the moment,” said Forbes.

All-island champion and howling favourites, JC, were facing possible elimination from the competition, having started the day levelled with Excelsior in Group J on four points, but second on goal difference.

So entering the final group match, Excelsior with a plus-two goal difference were ahead of JC with plus-one before the 28-goal debacle.

JC went on to demolish Denham Town 16-0 and Excelsior trounced Holy Trinity 12-0. Both teams ended with seven points, but the boys from Old Hope Road finished with a plus-17 goal difference to Excelsior’s plus-14, which saw JC advancing to the semi-final and eventually the final of Manning Cup set for this Saturday against Charlie Smith.

“If somebody is to come to us and substantiate it, we will go in that direction. We will be having a disciplinary meeting to delve more deeply with the schools involved to question them. But as it is, there is hardly anything we can do,” Forbes continued.

With both matches played at different venues and were scheduled to start at the same time just to avoid a possible travesty in local football, fans, administrators were left disgusted with what transpired.

Holy Trinity claimed they were saving their players for the cash-rich LIME Super Cup which they eventually lost, and were thumped, while Denham Town conceded six goals in six minutes of time added en route to a 16-0 massacre.

“In both instances only three substitutes were on the bench for both schools. In the case of Denham Town, most of the starting players were not there for the game. They started with their reserve goalkeeper and he got hurt and they had to use one of the out players to fill in and that’s when all of the goals scored in the last eight minutes or so on,” Forbes explained.