Northern leg gets underway

By LARRY ANDREW
THE Northern leg of the Papua New Guinea Football Association’s Under-17 youth soccer tournament has kicked off at the PNGFA Academy with some great talent on display, says match commissioner Alex Toki.
Toki told The National that the tournament started on Wednesday and concludes on Sunday.
He said 23 men’s and 11 women’s teams were taking part in the tournament from associations such as Chimbu, Goroka, Madang, Magiar, Ramu, Wau, Markham, Wantoat, Morobe and Lae.
“The association that has come with a big number is Chimbu with six teams (three men and three women’s teams). The tournament started on Wednesday and ends Sunday. The men’s teams had been grouped into four pools while the women’s teams had been put into two pools,” Toki said.
He said there were no issues in the running of the tournament over the last two days aside from the weather which disrupted the start of games.
Toki said the main issue facing organisers was verifying ages and ensuring that players met the requirement in terms of being elligible to take the field.
“Quite a few teams and their management are not sure of the age cut off limits and have therefore fielded players who are actually over age,” Toki said.
“It’s a problem we deal with every year but we are working our way through so everyone understands.
“We need to do a lot more awareness to get people to follow the rules and not field older players otherwise it defeats the purpose of having age group competitions,” Toki said.
Toki said most teams came to the games thinking that it was a regular a tournament but there were requirements for the age cut off mark.
“We need our association heads, coaches, team managers, and even the players, to get the information out to the teams and the players so theur do not end up wasting their time and ours.”
Meanwhile after the two days of competition the unofficial leaders of the men’s and women’s pools are: MFA in the men’s pool A with Maltech following, Nami Primary-Wau; Gabensis Primary (pool B); Wau Primary; St Luke’s (pool C); Madang 2 (pool D).
In the women’s division, the unofficial leaders of the tournament are Morobe FA (pool A) and Madang (pool B)