Following the successful inaugural staging of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF)/SportsMax Elite League, stakeholders are already plotting the way forward to ensure that the competition becomes a staple on Jamaica’s football calendar.

With the competition aimed at aiding in Jamaica’s football development by bridging the gap between schoolboy football and the country’s senior ranks, organisers have hinted at making significant improvements in all facets of the league.

The all-island, inter-parish competition, which featured 325 of the country’s best youth players in high-quality and competitive action, culminated on Saturday with KSAFA All-Stars lifting the title after a 2-1 win over Clarendon Galaxy at the Anthony Spaulding Sports Complex.

The KSAFA All-Stars pocketed the $500,000 grand prize, with Galaxy collecting the runners-up prize of $200,000. Losing semi-finalists Westmoreland and St Catherine were awarded $100,000 apiece for their efforts.

Tanya Lee, head of marketing, SportsMax, pointed to the positives of the competition as something to build.

“The tournament was great; we really had some high-quality football from the teams and we are pleased with the teams that the parish associations had put together.

“We believe that we would have served the mandate which we had when we started, which was to develop youth football and to give them more playing time throughout the season to aid in national development. And I thought that we did a great job with that this year because what we saw was really top-quality football from the players,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

However, with the spectator support for the final being nothing to write home about, Lee noted that that component as well as the organisation of the fixtures will be high on the agenda when the post-mortem is done.

“For us, we are going to build on the spectator support in order to have packed venues next year. One of the things that we are going to do is to be sure that we have matches in each parish because this year we only used three venues, so you find that there was a lot of travelling which didn’t allow the spectators to truly support their teams,” she explained.

“So for next season, we are looking to have the matches within the parishes and also to engage the schools and make sure that more of the youths come out to support the teams. We found that the spectators this year have been the diehard football crowd, but we are aiming to bring out more of the youths next year,” Lee added.

Each team from the 13 parishes comprised the top 25 players from each parish, with at least 20 being under age 18 and no more than five being between the ages of 18 and 20.

Kamal Powell, senior sponsorship and development manager at Digicel, stressed the importance of this aspect in showcasing the next generation of national players.

“The overall investment into the development of football is something that we have always been a part of and of course this is just another testament of our involvement in the development of Jamaica on a whole. We believe by investing in the youths that we will discover the next generation of Reggae Boyz that will make the World Cup in the future and make us proud,” Powell opined.

He continued: “And if we look at this team that won, we have players that went through our (Digicel) kick-start programme — players like Maleik Howell and Tyreek Magee, who both played instrumental roles.

“So we are definitely proud that we can be a part of this and it only goes to show that once you invest in the youth they will go forward in ensuring that they deliver success in the future. So we are expecting greater things to come.”

Meanwhile, Wayne Shaw, sports and recreation co-ordinator for Scotiabank and president of KSAFA, was beaming for more reasons than one at the end of the final on Saturday.

“I am very pleased that for the first year KSAFA won the competition, and apart from the crowd support, it was great and I am sure SportsMax will go back to the drawing board and find other ways to get people to come out. But the support for the final was good and overall it really was a good competition.

“Scotia’s mandate is youths and we are the sponsors for CONCACAF, so it is only fitting that we get involved with youth football in Jamaica because the key to development is to have the players playing more football… we have to be playing more football,” said Shaw.

The National Outdoor Advertising and Jamaica Observer were also sponsors of the league.