NOFA Club Provincial C’ships tentative kickoff set in April

Negros Occidental Football Association (NOFA) will be staging the 2014 NOFA Club Provincial Championships tentatively this April, as a qualifying tournament for the upcoming 4th Philippine Football Federation-Smart Club National Championships.
This was revealed by NOFA General-Secretary Paulline Javelona on Sunday in an interview over “Aksyon Isports” of dyEZ Aksyon Radyo-Bacolod.
She said this provincial tournament will determine which team will be representing the football association in the upcoming national championships.
“However, I have some difficulty right now with the April schedule because of some conflict of schedules. This is because one of the teams which committed to participate in this provincial qualifying, the Ceres-La Salle FC, is likewise playing in the UFL and will also be representing the President’s Cup on the same month,” Javelona explained.
“As a NOFA representative, we would also like to field the strongest team to represent the province in the national finals. And Ceres-La Salle is the two-time defending champion of this tournament,” she added.
On the other hand, the NOFA official also said that aside from the senior’s division, Negros Occidental is also the reigning back-to-back PFF-Suzuki U23 National Cup champion.
The tournament would have served as the qualifying for which team will represent the country in the Southeast Asian Games. However, the FA official noted that though the provincial squad had won the national tournament twice, they were also denied twice to represent the country.
“We have proven many times that the Negros Occidental team is the best in the country, but for unknown reasons the federation’s committee have yet to notice it,” Javelona said. “It’s quite unfair because our local clubs have been working so hard in order to come up with the best team. They spend much to form a highly-competitive football team. We hope that the efforts by these clubs in the province will be seen by the people in the federation,” she added./

WDJ