The promised announcement about the return of the Jamaica Premier League by the Professional Football Jamaica Limited (PFJL) did not come on Tuesday, but its Chairman Chris Williams has said that a decision will be made by week’s end.

Speaking on television on Tuesday night, Williams indicated that the PFJL required further clarification from the Government after the announcements made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the Minister of Local Government Desmond McKenzie on Sunday night.

“We postponed the meeting until Thursday. We decided to postpone the meeting because we heard the presentation from Minister Desmond McKenzie, as well as the prime minister and we wanted to get some clarification on the approvals that have been given. We weren’t able to get those clarifications in time for the board meeting, so we decided to postpone to get further clarification.

“We have been in discussions with the Government over the last two weeks and we have crafted a new submission and that new submission was submitted to the Ministry of Sports and to the ODPEM (Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management). We got a written response on Monday and we are seeking some clarification on that written response. So as a result of that we decided to postpone our meeting,” said Williams.

The PFJL head believes that their proposal to host the league removes almost all the possible risks of transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

“We have adjusted the protocols to make it even more stringent and we are awaiting feedback from the Ministry of Sports and from the ODPEM and the Ministry of Health.

“We feel, as we have felt for months now, it is a low-risk position. We have said before that the stadium would hold no more than 100 people and everyone would have on a mask and would be tested prior to coming into the match venue. Only the players on the pitch at the time and the referees would not have on a mask, so we do feel that the risk of spread is low and we do feel that we are able to execute a league within the confines of the pandemic.

“Nevertheless, we have submitted an additional option, so we now have on the table a second option and we are awaiting feedback on that second option,” Williams outlined.

When Fifa and Concacaf run competitions are taken into consideration, the window for the staging of the JPL is getting smaller and smaller.

“We want to make a decision this week because time is upon us clearly. The Fifa guidelines and the Concacaf guidelines give you until essentially [the start of the] Gold Cup, so we do have some hard stop dates and obviously we have to facilitate training to get players back into some sort of match readiness. So, when you take those things into consideration, you recognise that we are pretty much up against it right now and a decision has to be made,” said Williams.

Football interests in the country will now be anxiously awaiting the results of the PFJL meeting.