Playing on Astroturf can only enhance the quality of play during the preliminaries of the new LIME Pelican out-of-season football tournament, says one of the organisers.
The tournament, with a first prize of $100 000, will kick off on September 11 with a double header at the UWI’s Paradise Park facility due to the unavailability of the National Stadium.
“Basically, most of the players participating in the tournament are selected from the more elite players in Barbados and many of them have had some experience in travelling overseas, playing on AstroTurf,” tournament coordinator Randy Harris said Saturday at a press conference at Island Inn.
“Some do not, but I think giving them adequate [time] to prepare themselves at the field before the actual tournament starts will give them a feel of how the AstroTurf would play,” he added.
“I don’t think it would really hamper the standard of the tournament.
“I feel, if anything, it should enhance it, because most of the time our players are playing on turfs that don’t have a true reflection of how it [football] should be played,” Harris noted.
Long-standing parliamentarian Mia Mottley, chairperson of Pelican Creative Services Inc., the entity staging the tournament, said the appropriate arrangements for teams to hold practice sessions at Paradise Park would be put in place over the next two weeks.
“Clearly, the teams will have the opportunity to also train and practise on the AstroTurf, as we recognize it is a new surface for most of them,” she said.
She also noted that only two of the ten teams would be eliminated after the preliminaries.
“Eighty per cent of the teams go forward to the knockout [quarter-final stage].
“Normally, you won’t have such a high percentage moving forward, but for reasons [such as] the newness of the tournament [and] the difference in the turf, we felt that we would have that high a threshold move forward for this year.”
Mottley said the general admission fee was $10 but patrons would be accommodated in the seating areas for $20.
“As you know, Paradise Park has stands but we will be putting up additional bleachers [rises] with actual seats.
“And in relation to Kensington Oval, it would be $20 general admission and $30 for those who want the better seats,” she added.
“We are hoping to put tickets in certain box offices and we are hoping [to] offer a season’s ticket as well. Obviously, the season’s tickets will have some discount.”
Mottley advised patrons to travel with their umbrellas because everyone cannot be accommodated in the areas where there is shelter from the rain at Paradise Park.
“That’s why the prices are so low because we are cognizant that the elements, in relation to Paradise Park, may be an issue.
“We will have tents in some places to minimize it but I can’t tell you that people won’t get wet but when they are going to out-of-season football in the [New] Orleans as I have, I get wet, and if you are really like Rihanna, you will do like her, bring an umbrella,” she said.
