ISSA schoolboy football is an expensive venture, and with the 2022 season starting today the top contenders highlight the expenses they rack up just to get their players to an ideal level.

This season’s Manning Cup competition, which features urban-area schools, will host 37 teams split into six groups, and a general check by the Jamaica Observer revealed that a major part of the preparation process for the secondary schools is financing the teams — some dishing out millions of dollars.

St Andrew Technical High School coach, Philip Williams told the Observer that preparation starts as early as the second week in June when some amount of background work and training take place — activities that, he explained, required a lot of financial support.

“It is running close to a million dollars per week to house, camp, feed and hydrate and everything with the boys. Some teams may be running higher than that, depending on where they go to camp. It is a very expensive venture, trust me. The preparation starts long before the schoolboy season begins because you end the season with players who are injured,” Williams explained.

“Our main preparation started the second week in July to focus on the boys and how we want them to play. It is a lot of hours. Sometimes the parents don’t see the boys for five weeks, six weeks when they are away at camp.”

Williams told the Observer that another big-pocket picker is having to nurse players back to good health before they are allowed to compete.

“There is off season preparation, recuperation, and so forth. The expense is basically all year round. Apart from the football itself, you have the academic aspect that the managers really take care of also. Some of the boys, depending on their socio-economical background, managers have to extend themselves to homes also. It is really expensive.”

For the Excelsior High School team, Coach Xavier Gilbert said meals alone eat away a big portion of the budget.

“It is very costly, especially when you want to do things the right way. Transportation for preseason games, sometimes at camps there are three meals a day. Let’s do the calculation: You would buy a breakfast or lunch for minimum $500. When you think of having sometimes 30 players and staff, it’s about 40 persons,” Gilbert told the Observer.

“For each meal, that is 40 times $500. That is already $20,000. Total camp days is about 30 to a minimum 40 days for the summer period. For meals alone in itself, is about $2.5 million to $3 million. That is a huge expense. Some will manage to find it. Some find means and ways to get past students, communities and parents to chip in,” he explained.

Transportation, too, he added, is very taxing.

“Around town is anywhere between $10,000 and $12,000, and sometimes $15,000. Outside of Kingston, depending on where you go, is about $60,000 to $70,000. If you go to Montego Bay or Westmoreland, that’s over $100,000.”

And then there are medical expenses, training, gear, and equipment.

“It is easily close to $10 million on a minimum basis. That’s just a basic budget I’m alluding to. I’m sure other schools and some of the more established teams with bigger resources will say $20 million. It is costly and time-consuming. It’s a huge task, and a lot of work goes on behind the scenes and off the field.”

While not giving figures, Wayne Robinson, principal of Jamaica College (JC), said the institution’s schoolboy football budget is “ever increasing”.

“…But I can’t tell you what it is now. It is a lot of spending on equipment, food, gear, medical support, all of those things. Sports and football are part of our culture so we do spend a lot of time trying to get our boys ready. That is what has been going on for the summer. JC will be representing and we will be doing our best,” he told the Observer.

“Coaching fees also come into the preparation for the season. There is preparation of the field; that’s a big issue too. There is provision of support for equipment, provision of support for medical treatment, provision of support for food, provision of support for coaches, provision of support for gear. All of that come into the mix for the budget.”

Jevonnie Codlin, coach at Tivoli Gardens High School, said that getting the team ready takes an “immense amount of financing”.

“It is a very expensive programme. Whatever the boys need, we as coaches have to go out and get it. To be frank, our players don’t have most of the stuff that they need but there is always effort by the staff to get it. The boys were on camp for basically the entire month of August… I have heard that it’s the first time the school’s football programme has ever done that when a team is camping. It takes a lot of money to do so,” he said.

Codlin didn’t provide figures but said most of the recent assistance for the team has been acquired through outsourcing.

“This is so as players have to eat three meals per day — and that wasn’t a quick fix for our institution. Myself, Coach Nicholas and the goalkeeper, Coach Nelson, we try to make ends meet. We contact anyone that we know can assist us, and we have been successful with that in regards of food supplement for the past three to four weeks. We are extremely grateful. The principal and madam bursar are trying their utmost best for the boys to have what they need to be comfortable and perform to their full potential,” Codlin added.

He said that it would have cost his programme at least $1 million per week to prepare the team had they not been able to raise support from well-wishers.

The Observer could not secure responses in time from teams competing in the daCosta Cup, which is contested by schools in rural Jamaica.

All semi-finalists in both the Manning and daCosta cups received an unspecified cash prize. Clarendon College, the 2019 winners of the Olivier Shield, which is contested by the respective champions, pocketed a combined $1 million, with the runners-up JC taking home $750,000.

ISSA does provide some support, as a cash subsistence is made available to each school while all gear is purchased and all referee fees are paid by the organisers. Schools also earn 100 per cent of gate receipts in the preliminary round, and ISSA covers the costs for venues after the first round of each competition.

More schoolboy football coverage in Sport.