MONTEGO BAY, St James – Three schools that missed at least one season in the Inter Secondary Sports Association’s (ISSA) daCosta Cup schoolboys’ football competition, will return for the 2014/15 season. Irwin High, Merlene Ottey High and Petersfield High are among the 77 schools that have indicated they will be participating when the competition kicks off on September 6 in Montego Bay.

The teams were among those placed in the 15 zones by competition organisers ISSA in a release on Monday.

Five of the 15 zones will see 25 schools in the county of Cornwall competing for a place in the final which is scheduled for December 6.

Irwin High last played in the 2011 season and will be in Zone A along with Anchovy High, Cornwall College, Green Pond High and St James High.

Merlene Ottey return after several seasons away and are placed in Zone B along with Frome Technical, Green Island High and Rusea’s High.

Petersfield, missing from action last year, replace Knockalva Technical in Zone D and will join Black River High, Godfrey Stewart, Grange Hill and Mannings School.

Meanwhile BB Coke moves from Zone F back to Zone E, replacing Balaclava High and will take on Lacovia High, Maggotty High, Munro College, Newell High and defending champions St Elizabeth Technical High.

There will be an additional round of matches in the competition, it was announced recently as the organiser has tweaked the format of the 64 year old competition which they hope will give more teams a chance of reaching the lucrative quarter-finals.

This coming season, the top two teams from each of the eight Inter-Zone round groups will advance to a round of 16. Up to last season, only the top eight teams, the winners of each of the eight Inter-zone groups would qualify for the next round.

George Forbes, ISSA’s Competitions Secretary made the announcement at a meeting held in Mandeville and also pointed out that the number of teams qualifying for the Ben Francis Knockout would be drastically reduced from 12 to four, the

semi-finalists from the daCosta Cup.

The top two teams from each zone plus the next two best finishers will advance to the Inter-zone round where they will play in eight groups of four teams each.

The winners and runners-up from the eight groups will then advance to the round of 16 where they will play in four groups of four teams each with just the winners advancing to the semi-finals.