Anxious to rival its success in netball, local alumina giant Jamalco has unveiled ambitious plans to achieve national status for a football team it intends to fund.

These ideas and more were revealed at a press launch of their popular and extravagantly sponsored community league in Clarendon, now renamed the Jamalco Football League.

"I look forward to the day that we will talk about, at the national level, the Jamalco football team. Just as the ladies have done with netball, that's what we want to do with football," Leo Lambert, manager of corporate and government affairs, told the gathering of media, clubs and heads of the Manchester and Clarendon FAs as he outlined a new vision for the annually held competition.

General manager Jerome Maxwell provided the assurance for Jamalco's huge sponsorship endeavour in the brief comments where he also announced this year's $1.3 million sponsorship.

Regular competition

"Initially, we wanted to provide players to the national programme. We have achieved that and we want to go beyond that, we need a team that's going to do well in a national competition."

He said the commitment of the company in this regard was unlikely to change in face of difficulties the industry faced.

If the plan comes to fruition by next year, a team comprising the best players of the teams that participated in the regular competition will compete in the parish division one competition. From there they expect them to make their way up through the (confed competition) and eventually qualify for the nation's highest league, the Digicel Premier League.

Still beaming from Humble Lions' historic qualification, Clarendon FA president, Michael Ricketts, welcomed the ambition and even revealed a similar effort by another of his parish's corporate companies, Monymusk.

Manchester's FA president, Dale Spencer, was more cautious, calling for more 'discussions'.

The competition has been expanded to include all the areas of Jamalco's operations, including two for the first time from Manchester.