McKinley will forfeit its next football game, and a final decision will be made today on whether it will also forfeit the season finale the following week, coach Sam Cantiberos said last night.

“Right now, we don’t have enough eligible players to put on the field to play and be safe,” Cantiberos said. “There are a lot of people missing, especially on the offensive line. And there are many inexperienced players, including some who haven’t played football before.”

McKinley is down to 21 players on its roster and two are injured.

The Tigers (0-6, 0-5 OIA Red) will forfeit Saturday’s game against Leilehua, originally scheduled to be played at Roosevelt’s Ticky Vasconcellos Stadium. That game will officially be a 2-0 loss to the Mules. It’s possible that McKinley will also forfeit the Oct. 9 contest against Castle, also at Roosevelt.

“We have to make a decision by (today) if we are going to play that game (against the Knights) or forfeit,” Cantiberos said. “That decision will be based on our players’ safety. The players want to play, especially some of the seniors, and they deserve that chance (whether the game is played or not).”

The Tigers administration made the decision yesterday morning to forfeit the Leilehua game, and OIA football director Harold Tanaka told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that McKinley notified him that the Tigers were done for the season. It’s not known if there was a miscommunication (only one game forfeited instead of two) or if the Tigers have had a change of heart and wanted to hold out hope for the finale.

Cantiberos believes that the Tigers’ varsity numbers will be a lot stronger next season. There are 41 players on the junior varsity team, and about 40 percent of them are sophomores moving up to varsity next season to go along with the 15 juniors and one sophomore expected to return to the varsity.

“That’s (the 41 JV players) our future,” he said.

Anuenue forfeited the remainder of its season last week.