Guinness ‘Greatest of the Streets’ set for GT kickoff on Friday

Street football powered by Guinness will return to the thoroughfares of Georgetown after a four-year hiatus in less than a week, following the launch of the 2024 ‘Guinness Greatest of the Streets’ and Skills Challenge competition on Friday last.
Thus the National Park in Georgetown will come alive on Friday, March 15, when the tournament commences in the Georgetown zone for the first time. Streetball fans would be having high expectations.
At the Guinness Grill and Jerk Bar, located at the intersection of Cummings Street and South Road in Georgetown, this year’s tournament was officially launched on Friday evening with Guinness Brand Manager Lee Baptiste giving an overview of what to expect from this year’s tournament.

He announced, “The season this year will consist of 7 sub-meets and the national finals. For the first time, we’ll be heading to Essequibo, and this completes one of our major objectives: touching the hearts of persons in the three counties in Guyana. The other areas are Georgetown, Linden, Berbice, East Coast Demerara, Bartica and West Coast Demerara.

“This year, we will reintroduce the Skills Challenge, where persons can showcase their talent. This season will run for four months, as mentioned before, with the top teams participating in the national final.”
Focusing on the Georgetown zone, Baptiste shared why it was important to organizers to start in this division. He highlighted that it sets the tone for the remainder of the competition.
“As you know, this tournament was birthed in Georgetown, so Georgetown is kind of the mother of all street football, and everything starts from here. So, once persons see the football starts in Georgetown, the other areas start to get in the groove and get their game on; get in the teams, practising and so on. So, it’s important,” Baptiste disclosed.
Further, he related, “Before, we would start the season on the West Coast of Demerara, but we’ve changed it around. We want to start in Georgetown to kind of set the pace, and then we move into the other sub-meets.”
In addition, the Guinness tournament will venture to a new area in 2024: Essequibo. As such, Baptiste gave an update on how preparations are going for the staging in Region Two.
“We’re now in talks with individuals in Essequibo. As you know, Essequibo is not known as a big football enthusiast county, so to speak; so, we’re in communication with persons…to first coordinate the football. Once that is done, we’ll then move around to the communities, to see how many teams we can gather from those communities; then we’ll go forward from there,” Baptiste divulged, even as he revealed that the date for their sub-meet is not yet set in stone.
The Guinness street ball tournament will kick off at 19:00hrs on Friday with a battle between Alexander Village and Rising Stars. At 19:45hrs, Sophia and Bent Street will go toe-to-toe, while festival City and Laing Avenue Ballers will lock horns at 20:30hrs. the penultimate game of the evening will see Northeast La Penitence and Ballers FC clashing at 21:15hrs, then Gold is Money and Renegade All Stars bring down the curtains from 22:00hrs.
The Georgetown sub-meet will see 32 teams vying for supremacy.