After going one season without an official title sponsor, the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) premier schoolboy football knockout competition, the Champions Cup, will have a new title sponsor in 2019.

Reformatted and renamed after former title sponsors FLOW stepped away last year, the very exciting knockout competition will now be called the “KFC Champions Cup”.

This was announced at the presentation of awards ceremony for the 2018-2019 ISSA Schoolboy Football season at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel on Wednesday.

Andrei Roper, brand manager for KFC, was bubbling with excitement when he spoke of his company’s new role in sponsoring the competition.

“We are glad to be back involved with schoolboy football in a big way, all the traditional competitions but being involved with the knock-out tournament over the past three seasons, we see the value in having a tournament that has that much excitement and that much intensity, in that short space of time.

“That knockout format really lends itself to the type of intensity and the type of following and the type of rabid excitement that should accompany that type of football, so it’s very fitting for us,” he explained.

Roper was quick to explain that his company was not dropping sponsorship of the other competitions in favour of the Champions Cup.

“We love the traditional tournaments, we are still on board with the Manning and DaCosta Cups, Walker Cup, Ben Francis Cup and, of course, the Olivier Shield, but taking over the lead sponsorship of the Champions Cup really adds that much more value to the KFC brand,” he reasoned.

Roper suggested that it was a no-brainer to take over sole sponsorship of the competition, and he also promised that his company would be bringing their own flavour to the Champions Cup.

“Last year, the competition was sponsored by ISSA, it didn’t have a title sponsor, but all the sponsors of the schoolboy football season came together to make it happen and ISSA took the lead as sponsor.

“We will be able to execute, we will be able to interact and engage with the football fans all across the country in a really impactful way because it is a compact competition. It’s do or die, the intensity and the excitement and the attacking style of football really gives the football a much greater level of importance, so it was an easy decision for us,” noted Roper.

“As we evaluated last year we decided that the competition is still at a level where it is definitely going to be one of those competitions which fans are going to follow and you saw what happened at the final and we know that next season is going to be better. So we are glad to be back on board in a bigger way, for the Champions Cup, to make 2019 as memorable as the previous seasons,” Roper added.

The final of the competition usually brings out a legion of fans and the KFC man promised to make it another spectacular occasion in 2019.

“Incentives are one thing and every year we try to make the entertainment package at the final something that the fans can look forward to, whether it’s a live artiste, whether it’s some sort of a show, that adds that much more value and excitement for the fans and all stakeholders involved.

“So we will be looking to bring our unique flair and our unique twist to it, to make sure that everybody is happy and everybody enjoys the Champions Cup, so we are looking forward to 2019 for sure,” said the KFC executive.

Roper also spoke about the massive impact that the success of the boys had on their “Add Hope” campaign.

“That was very rewarding for us. More than 2,000 goals were scored in the first round of the Manning and DaCosta Cup and we were able to donate $500 for each of those goals scored to our national basic school and primary school feeding programme which we partnered with the Ministry of Education to execute under our “Add Hope” umbrella,” Roper revealed.