THE season four of the annual Channels Kids Cup kicks off on Monday at the Legacy Pitch of the Lagos National Stadium, where 24 teams are expected to jostle for the coveted trophy.Channels Television organises the football tourney in collaboration with Lagos State for public and private primary schools. Speaking at the media briefing to herald the commencement of the championship, Channels Television's General Manager, Special Duties, Steve Judo, said the tourney was designed in order to discover talents from the basics.'This is also part of the corporate social responsibility of Channels Television in helping to develop sports in the state and the country in general. Since its inception in 2009, the competition has grown in leaps and bounds and lots of talents have so far been discovered,' he said.To check cheating, Judo said the local organising committee (LOC) has conducted thorough screening of participating schools to ensure that every team was given a level playing ground. For the technical director of the championship, Olu Akapo, six schools out of the 30 that registered for this year's event have been screened out, leaving 24 teams after the first stage of the screening.'I want to congratulate the teams that made it to the second stage of the screening and this will be conducted on match day to ensure that we rid the tournament of cheating, especially age cheat,' he said. 'We will continue to discipline any team that cheats and will also encourage schools that have been cleared.'This will go a long way to nip the trend of age cheating in the bud. We also want to commend Channels for keeping faith with the tournament because some of the teams that featured in the championship have gone further to represent Nigeria in international tournament.'However, he warned teams to desist from cheating and eschew violence during tournaments, and further reaffirmed that the competition is meant for primary schools pupils below 13 years.Eight teams have been seeded based on their performances in previous editions and the remaining 16 teams will play one another in a knockout format on the first day, with winners facing the seeded eight teams for another elimination to decide the quarter-finalists.Among the seeded teams are St Stephen's (West Africa Evangelical Church), UNILAG Staff School, Central Primary School and five others. St Stephen's won the Milo National U-12 Championship in Calabar to represent the country at the Africa U-13 tournament held in Accra, Ghana, earlier this year.
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