President of the Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA), Wayne Shaw has explained that his organisation refused to participate in the Jamaica Football Federation’s (JFF) reformatted Super League because it would have crippled his organisation financially.

The proposed changes by the JFF have been in the pipeline since 2014 under then president, the late Captain Horace Burrell, but it has received strong opposition from KSAFA.

The ruling JFF had proposed that the powerful KSAFA participate in a South Eastern Zone and be grouped with St Catherine and St Thomas in the Super League, with the winner advancing to the four-team All-island Confederation Play-off from which two teams would gain promotion to the Red Stripe Premier League.

Having stood their ground, JFF President Michael Ricketts expressed his discomfort at KSAFA’s refusal to participate in the competition at a board of directors’ meeting last Friday, which gained support from Professional Football Association of Jamaica Chairman Donald Anderson.

After the presentations Ricketts tabled a new proposal comprising four groups of two parishes — KSAFA as one group and the western zone as one group. And following the withdrawal of the original competition format, all teams will participate in the newly titled National Super League competition.

This proposal was unanimously approved by the board in attendance.

However, JFF General Secretary Dalton Wint said they were disappointed with KSAFA’s stubbornness, and only conceded to their demands because JFF is a good “parent” and only wanted what was best for the “child”.

“The truth of the matter? I am disappointed we have an affiliate who did not adhere to the wishes of the board,” Wint told the Jamaica Observer via telephone from Barbados, where he is attending a Fifa Forward Workshop.

“They had an issue and we sat and discussed it, and the board decided that for the good of the sport we don’t want any disruption at this point, and we want KSAFA to be included in what we are doing,” said Wint.

“We decided that we would make that compromise and firstly withdraw that original plan of the restructure of the competition then produce a different one which, based upon KSAFA president, was satisfactory,” he added.

With the JFF giving in to KSAFA’s wishes, the perception is that the ruling body is soft and weak and cannot control the most powerful confederation in the country.

“That part of it is something that we can do without because we had discussions and made a decision, and that decision should have been adhered to. But we understand they were disgruntled and as a good parent, if possible, you want all of your children to be satisfied,” reasoned Wint.

KSAFA decided that they would not be a part of the JFF plans and would withdraw their teams from participating in the Confederation play-offs to gain promotion to the top league in the country.

“The Super League is really our second-tier league and if this competition was implemented we would be playing a third-tier league, which would be a Major League and a Division One, and sponsors not going to gravitate towards those kinds of competitions,” Shaw told the Observer.

“It would have been a problem to get sponsorship as the companies [are] not going to see Major League and Division One as a viable product; that would have hurt the clubs,” he asserted.

“With this new league that they were proposing we would have to take out our top four teams in the Super League to play in it, then our eight other Super League teams would have to play in the Major League, then we would have to demote some other teams to play Division One,” Shaw explained.

“We signed a letter saying we were not in agreement. We had a lot of meetings with the JFF giving [us] a lot of options how we could have solved this problem, but nothing was happening,” he said.

“That was a unanimous decision by the KSAFA clubs. There was a letter that was signed by all the clubs and we were united and stuck to our guns. United you stand, divided you fall,” said Shaw.

With KSAFA’s unity the governing body conceded and a different format was brought forward, splitting the 14 parishes into seven pairs, with the winner of each advancing to the premier league play-off from which two will gain promotion.

Kingston and St Andrew remained the same and will provide one team for the play-off. The other pairings are St Thomas/Portland, St Mary/St Ann, Manchester/St Elizabeth, and Clarendon/St Catherine.

Two teams will come from the Western Confederation because that competition was started before the new format. Hence, St James, Hanover, Westmoreland and Trelawny are already in action.

The seven winners will then play each other once, with the top two teams gaining promotion to the Red Stripe Premier League.