The FLOW Super Cup has given schoolboy football a shot in the arm that has seen the most popular football competition in the island move several leaps away from anything else in the Caribbean, at any level.

The month-long knockout tournament, played between the top eight Manning Cup and eight daCosta Cup teams, and powered by the marketing team at the telecommunications company, has grabbed the nation’s attention like no other competition, with the exception of the national high school athletics championships.The FLOW Super Cup has carved its niche into the nation’s sports psyche in a short three years.

How else could a second-round game, between Cornwall College and Rusea’s High School, attract such massive attention — as it was reported that many of the more than 10,000 patrons were pushing down gates and scaling fences to get in — but for expert marketing?

Many would say the Super Cup was the tonic that Jamaican football needed and at least one commentator suggested that the stagnant Red Stripe Premier League could benefit from such a competition.

All that glitters is not gold, however, and the super league could do with some tweaking if it is to be the developmental tool that it is being marketed.

Three years ago, when the first Super Cup was being launched with the usual hype and fanfare, I said in these pages that in its present format it is more of a detriment than development, and based on what we have seen it is safe to say I was right, after all.

If it is to be a Kingston vs rural competition then the rule must be changed to allow for a redraw of the team after each round to prevent all-daCosta or all Manning clashes in the second round. That’s the first change that must be done if it is to have credibility.

All three championships have been won by Manning Cup teams. Just one daCosta Cup team, Cornwall College, has ever made it to the deciding game — occuring this year with them losing in a thriller to Wolmer’s Boys’ last weekend.

After all the hype and glitter have ended however, a closer look will reveal how badly disadvantaged the rural schools have been in all three stagings and how much travelling across the island has negatively affected them as they chased the million-dollar prize and fame.

Of the three winners in the Super Cup, just one team has played a game outside of Kingston — Jamaica College in the inaugural season when they beat Cornwall College in the first round. Jamaica College’s next three games were played in Kingston. St George’s College last year and Wolmer’s this year made the short trek to Sabina for all their games.

This season was the first where rural teams got two games in Montego Bay, but even so, Cornwall College was forced to play back-to-back games in Kingston in a brutal stretch, where they played 11 games in three competitions in a month.

Last year, STETHS was the only rural team that played the Super Cup who reached the semi-finals of the daCosta Cup as Glenmuir High, who had two trips to Montego Bay in five days to play games in rain and mud both days, and Clarendon College both suffered from the hectic schedule.

The far greater number of teams in the daCosta Cup, the format of the competition, and having to prepare for the Super Cup, also works against them, unlike the Manning Cup with fewer teams and a schedule that is easier to manipulate.

To accommodate the Super Cup, the organisers have had to decimate the Ben Francis KO to four teams, down from 15, causing certain predictability near the end of the season — teams playing each other several times while the Walker Cup is untouched.

The number of teams in the Ben Francis KO was increased to keep more teams involved in football longer and take away the last four teams beating up on each other over the last few weeks of the season and it worked; it was real development, unlike the Super Cup in its present format.

The Super Cup, or something along that line, is great for the game but not at the expense of the players, and the Cornwall College team playing 11 games in about 30 days is akin to child abuse.

Hopefully, ISSA and FLOW can come up with a format that will work, not for the sponsors or the fans, but those who matter most — the players.