The past 12 months have giv­en pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, Ray­mond Tim Kee, a rea­son to be op­ti­mistic for the year which lies ahead. Tim Kee, who was elect­ed to head the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball some 14 months ago, has is­sued a state­ment re­flect­ing on both the de­vel­op­ments and strug­gles faced by the TTFA in the past year, much of which he an­tic­i­pat­ed.

"As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, we were up against it in 2013, some­thing which I had fore­seen but by which I had not been in­tim­i­dat­ed. The fi­nan­cial woes faced by the TTFA, stem­ming from sea­sons gone by, re­mained a ma­jor is­sue and at one point, we were not even sure to en­ter any of the sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments in which our na­tion­al teams even­tu­al­ly did par­take and in most cas­es, did so cred­itably.""The year that has just end­ed leaves me as pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) with a great deal of op­ti­mism as we be­gin 2014, a World Cup year and in many re­gards, one that promis­es to be full of ac­tiv­i­ties and con­tin­u­ing de­vel­op­ment for foot­ball in our beloved coun­try," said Tim Kee in a re­lease is­sued by the TTFA, yes­ter­day.

Tim Kee, an in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive and re­cent­ly elect­ed may­or of Port-of-Spain, said it was a holis­tic ef­fort from a com­bi­na­tion of per­sons em­ployed by the TTFA, na­tion­al team play­ers, match of­fi­cials and ref­er­ees, who have aid­ed in a suc­cess­ful 2013. Among TTFA's staff, he ac­knowl­edged the ef­forts of gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillips, di­rec­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Shaun Fuentes and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal."The ded­i­ca­tion of our staff mem­bers paved the way for our women's Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 teams to dom­i­nate the Caribbean, win­ning and fin­ish­ing run­ners-up in their re­spec­tive com­pe­ti­tions."Tim Kee added that the in­tro­duc­tion of Stephen Hart as head coach of T&T's se­nior men's team mid­way through the year, was "a breath of fresh air."

"He steered our team to im­pres­sive per­for­mances at the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup and the OSN Cup in Sau­di Ara­bia, giv­ing us much-need­ed hope and well-in­formed ex­pec­ta­tions."He was giv­en the job with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of ap­pli­ca­tion and per­for­mance of knowl­edge and to date he has done ex­act­ly that. Our se­nior team put us back on the in­ter­na­tion­al map with a se­ries of spir­it­ed per­for­mances which saw us end 2013 as the num­ber one ranked team in the Caribbean. We end­ed 2013 ranked sixth in Con­ca­caf, as com­pared to be­ing placed at num­ber 10 in the Con­fed­er­a­tion, when I as­sumed the pres­i­den­cy in No­vem­ber 2012."

He added, "Our coach­es con­tin­ue to ex­pand their knowl­edge of the game through our coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme, and I say, con­tin­ue aim­ing for greater things and serv­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the game lo­cal­ly. It is not go­ing un­no­ticed. "More of these ef­forts will fol­low as the or­gan­i­sa­tion steps up its grass­roots and shore­line foot­ball dis­tri­b­u­tion cam­paigns in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties."

Tim Kee laud­ed the as­sis­tance grant­ed by the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT). Both, he said, were piv­otal in see­ing varous T&T teams fly their flags in over a dozen na­tions dur­ing the past year.He, how­ev­er, lament­ed the lack of sup­port giv­en by cor­po­rate T&T, say­ing, "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we have not had the ben­e­fit of cor­po­rate T&T shar­ing the view of world icon, pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela who saw sport as one of the world's great­est ve­hi­cles to fos­ter peace and har­mo­ny among var­i­ous peo­ples."

"Sad­ly, we have not had one cent in spon­sor­ship, part­ner­ship or sup­port from cor­po­rate T&T. As we pur­sue our 2018 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme, among Pan Amer­i­can, Olympic and oth­er Con­ca­caf and Fi­fa tour­na­ments, we re­quest sup­port from all."We are al­ways work­ing on forg­ing sim­i­lar re­la­tion­ships with oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions as we seek to lift the stan­dard of our foot­ball through var­i­ous de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes and train­ing regimes, both­at home and abroad. Our mer­chan­dise cam­paign al­so got off the ground with the sales of our Jo­ma na­tion­al team shirts. The re­sponse has been quite en­cour­ag­ing so far."In clos­ing, I wish to state that in the en­su­ing year, we at the TTFA don't in­tend to low­er ex­pec­ta­tions to meet our per­for­mance. In­stead, we will aim to raise our lev­el of per­for­mance to meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of our fans and sup­port­ers who have been there with us along the jour­ney."We ex­pect to be the best we are ca­pa­ble of and do what is nec­es­sary to make it a re­al­i­ty."