Com­pet­i­tive sports will fi­nal­ly re­turn to T&T af­ter al­most two years.

Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe con­firmed this via a re­lease yes­ter­day which comes al­most a month af­ter she de­liv­ered a pro­pos­al to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rance Deyals­ingh, out­lin­ing the guide­lines they in­tend­ed to use for a re­turn-to-play plan for all sports in safe zones.

On Jan­u­ary 6, Cud­joe, who had tak­en a per­son­al de­ci­sion to en­sure that on-the-field ac­tiv­i­ties would take place this year, told Guardian Me­dia Sports then that Deyals­ingh and his prin­ci­pal med­ical of­fi­cer were sat­is­fied with the pro­pos­al and she was just await­ing an of­fi­cial re­sponse from the Deyals­ingh and his min­istry.

Since the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic be­gan to af­fect T&T in March 2020 most sports have been on the side­lines with a few ex­cep­tions.

Na­tion­al teams and ath­letes have been al­lowed to train pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Sports that in­volve lit­tle to no con­tact have al­so been per­mit­ted such as golf and ten­nis.

On Jan­u­ary 5, the Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, dur­ing a Min­is­ter of Health COVID-19 brief­ing when asked about the re­turn of more sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, said, “On the is­sue of out­door sports I am aware that the Min­istry of Sport is ac­tu­al­ly work­ing on a pol­i­cy so we will work to­geth­er with them to do same.”

Cud­joe has re­peat­ed­ly called for sports stake­hold­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed to help re­turn to a lev­el of nor­mal­cy.

On Sun­day, the Min­is­ter via a re­lease stat­ed: " The Ho­n­ourable Sham­fa Cud­joe, Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment is pleased to an­nounce that the Safe Zone Re­turn to Play pro­pos­al de­vel­oped by the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers and of­fi­cials has been ap­proved. Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies and Sport Serv­ing Bod­ies will now be able to host sport­ing events and ex­e­cute sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties for ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed ath­letes, coach­es, of­fi­cials, and ad­min­is­tra­tors, at spe­cif­ic sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties. Ap­proval has al­so been grant­ed for ful­ly-vac­ci­nat­ed spec­ta­tors to at­tend events at 50 per­cent fa­cil­i­ty ca­pac­i­ty for out­door events, and twen­ty-five per­cent fa­cil­i­ty ca­pac­i­ty for in­door events sub­ject to guide­lines to be is­sued by the Min­istry of Health."

The re­lease al­so as­sures that the new Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions will be pub­lished yes­ter­day and will take ef­fect from (Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 24, 2022).

Both Cud­joe and Deyals­ingh be­came tar­gets by the var­i­ous sport­ing bod­ies, all de­mand­ing that con­tact sports be re­turned. On­ly Sat­ur­day na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve de­scribed the con­stant re­fusal to have sport­ing events in the coun­try as a men­tal drain on so­ci­ety and called for all sports, and in par­tic­u­lar, foot­ball to be al­lowed to play in the in­ter­est of pro­vid­ing fit­ter and stronger na­tion­al teams to rep­re­sent the coun­try.

An­oth­er ex-na­tion­al foot­ball Brent San­cho, two weeks ago, de­mand­ed fair­ness from the gov­ern­ment by hav­ing sport­ing events played, say­ing while the gov­ern­ment was al­low­ing vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed crick­eters to play at the cur­rent Un­der-19 Crick­et World Cup as well as the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), they were re­fus­ing all oth­er sports.