MBU to focus on youth as it begins preparation for next football season
He said he appreciated the work done by Wadadah’s Head Coach Daniel Ricketts, stressing that “Wadadah put in some serious effort, hats off to Daniel,” adding that had the club been able to get its registration over the line, MBU might not have played the one-off game.
With the withdrawal of UWI FC, there was space for one more team. According to the rules of the play-offs, the 11thplaced team from the last season (MBU) and the third-place team from the last promotion play-off (Wadadah) would meet in the one-game play-off to decide who would be promoted.
While MBU, who last participated in the Premier League two years ago, were able to register on the platform by the first deadline, September 27, it was a different story for Wadadah United as to register they had to accomplish a long list of activities to get to the extended deadline of October 1.
The to-do list included changing the name of the club from Wadadah FC, which was owned by the late Gene Grey and that meant registering it with the Companies of Jamaica, applying for a name change through the St James Football Association, setting up a bank account and then registering its players and officials on the JFF platform.
Wadadah came up just short as, after acquiring all the other documents, they were not able to complete the registration of their players by the 5:00 pm deadline.
The club has not given up however, and has sought legal advice with the intention of appealing the decision.
Ian Kemble, JFF’S head of competitions, told the
Observer West on Monday, “We cannot extend forever; they never met the deadline and so we had to move on.”