Kevin Sunich

To­ba­go Unit­ed Foot­ball Club has been ex­pelled with im­me­di­ate ef­fect from the T&T Pro League. A re­lease from the league in­di­cat­ed that at a meet­ing yes­ter­day, a ma­jor­i­ty de­ci­sion was made by the board of di­rec­tors af­ter con­sid­er­ing and dis­cussing a spe­cial res­o­lu­tion. The re­lease stat­ed: "Fol­low­ing a pro­tract­ed process that al­lowed To­ba­go Unit­ed Foot­ball Club am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­solve its fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, the club has failed to pro­vide the T&T Pro League board of di­rec­tors with a con­crete plan and com­mit­ment to ad­dress these mat­ters."

The meet­ing which was chaired by deputy chair­man of the Pro League, David John-Williams, was at­tend­ed by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from eight of the 11 clubs, how­ev­er, To­ba­go Unit­ed was one of the clubs that failed to show. In ad­di­tion the re­lease stat­ed: "Board of di­rec­tors deeply re­grets hav­ing to make such a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion as the or­gan­i­sa­tion has sup­port­ed To­ba­go Unit­ed res­olute­ly up to this junc­ture. The league re­mains com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball in the sis­ter isle.

"As much as the board of di­rec­tors is dis­mayed and sad­dened at hav­ing to make this de­ci­sion, it is sat­is­fied that it has worked close­ly, fair­ly and hon­est­ly with the club to re­solve their dif­fi­cul­ties." As an im­me­di­ate con­se­quence of the de­ci­sion, the sis­ter isle club will not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the First Cit­i­zens cup qual­i­fi­er sched­uled for to­day. To­ba­go was ex­pect­ed to meet St Ann's Rangers for a quar­ter­fi­nal spot, how­ev­er, with the club out, Rangers will ad­vance to the Round of Eight. With re­gards to the league com­pe­ti­tion, the team will not be al­lowed to ful­fil its fix­tures and all points from the pre­ced­ing match­es will be de­duct­ed from the stand­ings.