BLACKHEART Productions and the St. Lucia Football Association along with the affiliates of the St. Lucia Football Association met on Tuesday afternoon to put things in place for the Blackheart/SLFA Knockout Football tournament set to kick off on Saturday September 19 at the Beausejour Cricket Ground.
The tournament this year will be played at three venues the Beausejour Cricket Ground, the Phillip Marcellin Grounds in Vieux Fort and the Soufriere Mini Stadium.
The tournament will be officially launched with a ”champion of champions” festival this coming Saturday from 1.00 p.m. at the Soufriere Mini Stadium featuring six past Blackheart Champions namely Gros Islet, Mabouya Valley, Dennery, Micoud, Anse la Raye, reigning past Blackheart Champions, Canaries and the 2014 and 2015 SLFA Heineken Fantasy Football Champions Vieux Fort North and Soufriere who is also the host team.
They will be involved in a whole day affair playing one hour knock out matches with the winner taking home a grand prize of $2000.00 with $1000.00 for the second place finisher.
The draw for the first round of matches on Saturday afternoon was made at Tuesday afternoon’s technical meeting of the St.Lucia Football Association and it brought out some interesting match ups.
The results of the draw were as follows with the matches being announced in the order in which they will be played in the first round; Micoud against Vieux Fort North, Gros Islet against Dennery, Canaries against Anse la Raye and Mabouya Valley against Soufriere.
A number of warm up and promotional events as well as play-off matches will be held ahead of the kick off of the tournament on Saturday September 19 at Beausejour.
Four teams will be involved in the play-offs this year: Anse la Raye, Mon Repos and Choiseul which did not qualify for the tournament last year and Desruisseaux which was the worse loser in round one of the 2014 tournament.
The four teams have been drawn to play two, two leg encounters with the winner of each encounter on aggregate over the two legs qualifying for the final.
The winner of the play-off final qualifies automatically for the tournament proper.
In a play off double header scheduled for Wednesday at the Phillip Marcellin Grounds in Vieux Fort, from 6.00 p.m. Anse la Raye play Choiseul and from 8.00 p.m. Mon Repos Desruisseaux.
On August 23 at the Micoud Playing Field from 4.00 p.m. Desruisseaux plays Mon Repos and from 6.00 p.m. Choiseul meets Anse la Raye.
The play off final is set for the Mindoo Phillip Park on August 29 along with some other warm up matches.