St. John’s Antigua- Organisers of the annual Warriors Cup football tournament have announced that this year’s event will run from August 9 to September 7.
President of Young Warriors FC and chief organiser of the tournament, Colin James, revealed that invitations have gone out to a number of teams across the Caribbean and even further afield.
“Generally, we have invited teams from across the Caribbean, in the United States, in England, in Europe and Canada as well. We have been getting some interesting responses from the Antigua Council out of Florida. We did some promotions in Florida during the World Cup match between Antigua and the United States ad out of that, Ambassador Rupert “Baba” Blaze is making some effort to see if he can get a team out of the Tampa, Florida area to come down for the tournament,” James assisted.
“As well too, his brother Sonny Blaze is making some contacts out of North Carolina through a college which his son goes to, so we are hopeful that we might be able to attract a team or two out of the United Sates,” he added.
He revealed, however, that the original dates of this year’s tournament had to be tweaked just a bit as they seek to conclude the event ahead of Antigua & Barbuda’s return to 2014 World Cup Qualifiers in September.
“Originally, we wanted to finish on September 9; but because we had set the dates before the World Cup qualifying dates were announced, we have to now bring it to August and finish September 2 because Antigua play Guatemala on September 7 and 11, and we don’t want to get caught up in the World Cup hype around that time so we want to finish a full week before Antigua plays Guatemala,” he said.
“The actual dates for the tournament are August 9 to September 7 so from August 9 to 19 we will have the Youth Cup where we will cover competitions for Under 10s, Under 13s, Under 15s and Under 17s, and then from August 20 to 24 we will have the Youth Development Camp. And then from August 25 to September 2, we will have the Championship Cup where we are looking for 16 top clubs out of Antigua & Barbuda as well as, we have invited overseas teams to take part,” he added.
James encouraged local teams and clubs to register early for this year’s event which he expects to launch during the early stages of July.
“The official launch of the Warriors Cup will take place on the 8th of July and what we will do on that day is have a whole day event at the Buckley’s Playing Field starting from 11 am and going right through until about 5:30 pm; and then at 5:30, we will have the official ceremony to launch the Warriors Cup. So we will be intensifying our promotions, our marketing campaign for the tournament, and we hope that the Antiguan clubs and teams will register as early as possible so we can have a smooth running tournament,” he said.
Registration fee for the Warriors Cup is US $150 or EC $400 per club which entitles each club to register, in addition to a senior team, youth teams in each age category being offered. The deadline for registration is July 15.
Winners of the Youth Cup in the various age groups will all receive US $400, while runners-up will receive US $200.
Winners in the Champions Cup will take home US $1,000, while the runners-up will receive US $500.
