The Premier League Clubs Association (PLCA), the body formed a few years ago to manage the Red Stripe Premier League (RSPL), has run out of ideas. That is, if they had any idea how to run a proper football competition, in the first place.

Yet another change to the format of the competition is an admission, at least to me, that the PLCA recognises that the product is not that good. If it is not broken, then why try to fix it?

This season, the brain thrust at the PLCA has decided to introduce a quarter-final round, adding four games to the competition in an era where practically every single major league in the world plays a straight league.

Our football leaders have insisted that semi-finals add “excitement”, and so the sponsors are sold on this backward format and the fans are told that a play-off at the end of the competition makes it more exciting.

It’s interesting, however, that the PLCA recognises the team that finishes with the most points at the end of the three rounds, and that team has the number one seed when qualifying for the CFU Caribbean Club Championships, not the team that wins the knockout portion.

Are you confused? Maybe, because the PLCA is confused, as well.

I have no issue with trying to make the league better, but I draw the line at this insane suggestion from a senior PLCA executive that adding the quarterfinal game will help to develop the game at that level.

I have never professed to be that smart, but it would take some convincing to get me to accept that the number three, four, five and sixth-placed teams in a 12-team league playing off against each other for a spot in the semi-final is development.

Four extra games is not development. Go ahead and change format if you must, but don’t call it development, as that makes you look like you have no clue what you are doing.

Any positives from the extra round could mean those teams participating could earn more at the gates, but it will also mean having to spend more to prepare for two more games.

It may go some way in preventing a practice we have seen where teams that are ‘comfortable’, that is, they have avoided relegation, from “helping” other teams avoid relegation as well.

What the PLCA needs to be doing is to work with the clubs to make the product better and more appealing.

The standard of the league, especially come February and the latter third of the league can be downright ugly, especially those teams in the lower half of the points table, some of which cannot even field a full 18 players come match time.

It is no wonder that the last few national senior coaches have not chosen too many players from the RSPL for national duties as, to be honest, there is not much from which to choose.

But that’s for a different article at another time.