A three-day football extravaganza with more than 500 players, coaches and spectators from 22 overseas teams will be hosted by Saltus Grammar School next month.

It will be the first Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS) tournament to be held outside of Canada.

The tournament is for boys aged between 14 and 18 and will be held from October 16 to 18 at five venues: the National Sports Centre, North Field, the Bermuda Football Association Field, Bermuda Athletic Association Field and Saltus Grammar School.

Saltus, who have competed at the previous two tournaments, have entered two teams after one Canadian school withdrew.

Darrin Lewis, the organiser and director of athletics at Saltus, said that each team would play at least five matches regardless of their results

“There will be round-robin stages on the Thursday and Friday mornings,” Lewis said.

“From those results the teams will be realigned into the knockout stages, which will be the gold, silver and bronze divisions.”

Among the Canadian schools taking part include Ridley College, Upper Canada College, St Andrews College, and Trinity College School.

The opening ceremony will be staged at the NSC at 5pm on Wednesday, October 15, with games starting the next day at 9.30am.

Jon Beard, the deputy head at Saltus, said that the visiting schools would be covering the costs of their travel and accommodation.

“We’re working on putting on the best tournament we possibly can,” Beard said. “We’ve been working with the Bermuda Tourist Authority and a lot of sponsors locally, and I think it’s good for the Island to be bringing in so many people.

“We’ve been going to Canada for over a decade to play sport and when we became part of CAIS we were then invited to their tournaments.

“I think people in Bermuda will have heard of some of the Toronto schools taking part like Ridley, Country Day School and St Andrews College. We also have schools coming from Vancouver, Nova Scotia and the middle of Canada.”

Beard added that he expected a high standard of football and believed the Saltus teams would be more than capable of holding their own.

“I remember when we first played in Canada and there was this idea that we would just blow everybody away — well, we didn’t,” he said.

“We lost in the consolation final at the first tournament we played in and last year we were defeated in the semi-finals.

“There will be some decent players coming and this will their end-of-season tournament, whereas our boys have only played two games.

“It’s a fairly brutal schedule of games but it’s the same for all teams.”

Claire Charlemagne, the head of Saltus, revealed that the school would also be hosting the girls’ CAIS tournament in 2016.

The organising committee includes Manny Faria, of the Bermuda School Sports Federation, and Richard Todd, the Bermuda Football Association academy director.

CAIS is a community of independent schools set up in 1981, which promotes leadership, training, research and international standards of educational excellence.