By Audley Boyd, Assistant Sport EditorTHE JAMAICA Football Federation (JFF) office is expected to be full of activity today and tomorrow as National Premier League clubs seek to complete player transfers ahead of this week's deadline.
The transfer window should have opened on the first working day of January last Friday but the JFF deferred the process until Monday and says it will only deal with such issues from that day through to Thursday each week from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Despite that, Earl Bailey, the JFF's press officer, said up until yesterday afternoon no transfers had taken place.
However, he predicted that "the office will get busier tomorrow and Thursday" as clubs seek to enlist players for the next round of matches.
"Quite a few clubs have called but they have indicated that they will not come in until Wednesday or Thursday because the players will still be able to play on Sunday once they are fully registered," Bailey said.
"The transfers take place up to 2:00 p.m. on Thursday when the office is open to the public and there will be no transfers on Friday. This will go up until January 29," he further explained. "We close off on the 29th because we don't take transfers on a Friday."
Bailey has said in a report published Saturday in The Gleaner that three clubs came to the JFF's New Kingston office hopeful of transferring players for last Sunday's round but were turned back as the process was deferred.
Given that scenario, it was anticipated that some amount of trading would have taken place on Monday.
However, Bailey said: "There's no real haste to do it. If you register a player on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, then the earliest they can play is on Sunday."
Pointing to another reason, he said: "There are some players who aren't free to move and the clubs would still be negotiating, so they wouldn't come in to register until the back-end of the week ... club to club correspondence is still taking place."
Players are transferred in two categories, amateur (for lower leagues) and non-amateur (NPL clubs), with softer terms for amateurs.
For a transfer to take place, a club wishing to acquire the services of the player in question must first inform the player's club of their interest in writing before commencing negotiations.
When negotiations are complete the player is issued with a signed transfer certificate from his former club and his new club uses this certificate to effect the transfer with the JFF.
If, however, an amateur has not represented any team since August 2001, then no transfer certificate is required for that player.
All contracts attract an administrative fee, $6,000 for non-amateurs and $3,000 for amateurs. From this fee, the JFF keeps 60 per cent and gives the other 40 per cent to the parish association of the club that the player has left.
