It may not have been much but the fact that Jamaica College (JC) contested the ISSA/FLOW Manning Cup final against St Andrew Technical High School (STATHS) without Manager Ian Forbes and Assistant Coach Andrew Peart in the technical area; could be considered a small victory for the Jamaica Football Referees’ Association.

The referees yesterday threatened not to turn up for the showpiece event at the National Stadium as they declared their disagreement with ISSA’s ruling in relation to the incident where members of Jamaica College’s staff were accused of verbally attacking their colleagues following their 1-2 loss to Kingston College in the ISSA/FLOW Super Cup semi-final game on November 18.

ISSA on Thursday ordered JC’s Peart and Forbes to apologise to the referees, a sanction which was deemed inadequate by the officials.

As such their push for tougher sanctions reaped some result, as the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) later took the matters into their own hands and ordered ISSA to dismiss both team officials from the technical area for yesterday’s Manning Cup final.

The JFF, in a release circulated a mere two hours before the scheduled 6:00 pm kick-off, said it had instructed ISSA that “the officials named in the report on the Jamaica College vs Kingston College FLOW Cup semi-final should not participate in any technical activity at the Manning Cup final match”.

“The JFF is expecting full co-operation in this regard, however, if this instruction is not adhered to, the match officials have been instructed not to take the field,” the release stated.

Earlier, there was cause for concern for ISSA when the disgruntled referees, in expressing their views on the ruling, plotted protest action which may have resulted in the postponement of the game.

When contacte,d George Forbes, ISSA’s competitions director, confirmed the referees’ disagreement, but was adamant that his organisation stands by its decision.

“All I am simply saying, if we are going to bend to the referees all we do is; whenever anything happens we will let the referees rule on it because we made a ruling and they are going to say the ruling was too light so they are on strike,” Forbes told the Jamaica Observer.

He continued: “We have done what we needed to do, so if they feel as if it is not the ruling that they wanted then let them do what they have to do. If they choose not to turn up we have to just deal with it, so we would just cancel the football season and whatever else we have to do.

“[But] as far as we are concerned the game is still on. The president spoke to them and the president made ISSA’s position quite clear, so they have to do what they have to do. We cannot and will not make a decision and then go back on it; we can’t do that. So if they don’t like the decision then they will have to do what they want to do,” Forbes ended.