San­gre Grande-based North East Stars are ea­ger to re­turn to the T&T Pro Foot­ball League af­ter a tak­ing a one-year break.

How­ev­er it faces a race against time to have the San­gre Grande Recre­ation Ground, its home venue up­grad­ed to league stan­dards by its Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion's. Two sea­sons ago, Stars' home venue, San­gre Grande Recre­ation Ground, wasn't up to stan­dard for play in the TT Pro League with a poor field sur­face and un­san­i­tary and un­der-main­tained play­ers' fa­cil­i­ties forc­ing home match­es to be played at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar, and even fur­ther away at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va.

De­spite frus­tra­tions of not play­ing at its home ground, the for­mer league win­ner and FA Tro­phy cham­pi­on, fin­ished a re­spectable third in the league cham­pi­onship, a year af­ter fin­ish­ing among the bot­tom three. The fol­low­ing year, club own­er Dar­ryl Ma­habir pulled the club–which once host­ed play­ers such as Jer­ron Nixon, Kendall Jagdeosingh, An­tho­ny Wolfe and Brent San­cho–out of the league with the be­lief that the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion would have up­grad­ed and main­tain the fa­cil­i­ty in time for a 2010 re­turn to Pro League foot­ball. But a year has gone by and the fa­cil­i­ty re­mains the same to date, with the play­ing sur­face still in des­per­ate resur­fac­ing needs and the chang­ing fa­cil­i­ties in a de­plorable state.

Stars have un­til Thurs­day to con­firm its in­volve­ment in the com­ing sea­son, and things are look­ing bleak for the club un­less the San­gre Grande Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion gives its full com­mit­ment to the recre­ation ground's restora­tion. "We are still in the same prob­lems with­out a prop­er fa­cil­i­ty," said Ma­habir. "The (San­gre Grande Re­gion­al) Cor­po­ra­tion did come in and do some work, how­ev­er its still not enough to bring a Pro League match in our com­mu­ni­ty."

"Play­ing in the Pro League is im­por­tant for the com­mu­ni­ty and its youths, be­cause they can ben­e­fit. Over the past year we have been get­ting steady calls from a lot of young play­ers from schools in the dis­trict who want to know if we are com­ing back in­to the League. But we are un­able to give them a pos­i­tive feed­back just yet. They want to play and they want to play for their com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

Ma­habir fur­ther ex­plained, "We are not just about par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Pro League. We want to be with­in our com­mu­ni­ty. Go­ing to Ari­ma or some oth­er sta­di­um doesn't ben­e­fit this com­mu­ni­ty. Play­ing pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball is one thing, but play­ing Pro League foot­ball with­in your com­mu­ni­ty is the key essence to every­thing."

Ma­habir al­so not­ed that with the re­cent ap­point­ments of Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Brent San­cho and Di­rec­tor of Foot­ball Kevin Jef­frey, both for­mer na­tion­al and club play­ers, the hopes of Stars re­turn­ing to the Pro League are alive. Stars's Board of Di­rec­tors are ex­pect­ed to meet with the San­gre Grande Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion again next week with hopes of re­ceiv­ing good news. The foot­ball club is al­so ne­go­ti­at­ing with the cor­po­ra­tion for lease of the Damarie Hill Recre­ation Grounds on a long-term ba­sis with the in­ten­tion of up­grad­ing the fa­cil­i­ty to a mi­ni-sta­di­um sta­tus for use in 2011.

Ma­habir es­ti­mates that the in­tend­ed work on the Damarie Hill venue will take eight months to com­plete, once ap­proved by the cor­po­ra­tion.