For­mer T&T, Read­ing and Hi­bern­ian mid­field­er An­tho­ny Rougi­er has ac­quired full own­er­ship of south-based TT Pro League club FC SouthEnd. Rougi­er bought the full own­er­ship for an undis­closed sum from co-own­er David Far­rell of Tan­gent Lim­it­ed, an arrange­ment which was for­malised last week. "This will be bet­ter for the club go­ing for­ward," said the for­mer T&T cap­tain and in­ter­na­tion­al de­fen­sive mid­field­er, who played in both the Strike Squad and So­ca War­riors era. FC SouthEnd was formed last sea­son be­tween busi­ness part­ners Far­rell and Rougi­er, but ran in­to fi­nan­cial prob­lems dur­ing its first sea­son at the T&T Pro League be­cause of a lack of spon­sor­ship.

But de­spite the fi­nan­cial woes faced by the south-based club and los­ing key play­ers Sylvester Tees­dale, Ro­mauld Aguil­era and Mar­cus Joseph, SouthEnd fin­ished the 2009 Dig­i­cel Pro League cham­pi­onship in eighth po­si­tion, which was a sign of promise by the south­ern­ers. "My role at the club was deal­ing with the tech­ni­cal as­pects and get­ting the play­ers to a stan­dard for pro­fes­sion­al play while Far­rell dealt with the man­age­r­i­al and fi­nan­cial as­pects of the club," said Rougi­er. "How­ev­er things didn't go smooth­ly. Spon­sor­ship deals nev­er came and with­out the right fund­ing our game was af­fect­ed. Play­ers weren't com­fort­able and some even left. But now that I am at the helm of things and with a new man­age­ment team in place, we are con­fi­dent that south­ern Trinidad will have a vi­able SouthEnd," added the for­mer T&T cap­tain.

With his for­mer club Unit­ed Petrotrin FC opt­ing out of the Pro League this sea­son, FC SouthEnd stands as the on­ly pro­fes­sion­al club in the south­ern re­gion, and Rougi­er says he plans to keep the club alive for as­pir­ing foot­ballers of south Trinidad. Rougi­er, a for­mer act­ing com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions man­ag­er at Alutrint, named his new ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee be­gin­ning with him­self as founder and pres­i­dent, Mori­ba Bak­er (as­sis­tant sports co­or­di­na­tor at UTT) and Selvyn Lewis (founder and pres­i­dent of BAR­CAM–hu­man and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion). "I left my per­ma­nent job at Alutrint be­cause I be­lieve that I can deal with com­mu­ni­ty is­sues through sport," said Rougi­er. "FC SouthEnd will no longer a foot­ball club, it is now a sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion."