Four lo­cal box­ing of­fi­cials were ex­pelled and one de­barred from the T&T Am­a­teur Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) three weeks ago, for vi­o­la­tions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's con­sti­tu­tion which stemmed from an an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) which took place on Jan­u­ary 10.

The quar­tet are Matthew Noel, Er­i­ca St Louis, Glen­roy An­der­son and Er­rol Camp­bell. Dim­i­tiri Stroude, a pro­fes­sion­al ref­er­ee/judge with the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol (TTB­BC), has been banned in­def­i­nite­ly.

Noel, the Prin­ci­pal of Diego Mar­tin Boys RC School, is the man­ag­er of Champs Box­ing Acad­e­my, Diego Mar­tin. An­der­son serves as the club's train­er and St Louis is the club sec­re­tary. Camp­bell, a Po­lice In­spec­tor, who is an am­a­teur ref­er­ee/judge but not at­tached to any club, was al­so ex­pelled.

Stroude, who is al­so the train­er of five-time reign­ing na­tion­al cham­pi­on gym Mag­ic of Care­nage, has been sanc­tioned since he is a pro­fes­sion­al ref­er­ee/judge. Un­der the laws of the AI­BA, the world gov­ern­ing body for am­a­teur box­ing, he can­not par­tic­i­pate in any of­fi­cial events host­ed by the TTA­BA with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

The sanc­tions were hand­ed down af­ter it was al­leged that the five in­di­vid­u­als were at­tack­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion dur­ing an in­ter­view on iS­ports Thurs­day on i95.5FM on Feb­ru­ary 12, fol­low­ing the AGM.

When con­tact­ed, Ce­cil Forde, pres­i­dent of the TTA­BA told the Guardian that dur­ing the AGM the five mem­bers were an­gry and stormed out of the meet­ing af­ter the gen­er­al coun­cil vot­ed to post­pone the as­so­ci­a­tion's fi­nan­cial re­port to an­oth­er date.

He said, "I think this de­ci­sion an­gered those mem­bers, but there's a process for all our mem­bers to ad­dress any con­cerns they may have, but they failed to fol­low the con­sti­tu­tion and that process and left the ex­ec­u­tive of the or­gan­i­sa­tion with no choice but to act."

Ac­cord­ing to TTA­BA con­sti­tu­tion Sec­tion 11.1: Any mem­ber who com­mits any of the fol­low­ing acts shall au­to­mat­i­cal­ly lose his/her mem­ber­ship or shall be de­barred from par­tic­i­pa­tion in any of­fi­cial com­pe­ti­tion of the As­so­ci­a­tion."

Ar­ti­cle 13.1 (2) states: Any mem­ber tak­ing their com­plaint to the me­dia or pub­lic do­main with­out hav­ing it of­fi­cial­ly ad­dressed by the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly through a spe­cial meet­ing held for that pur­pose is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered to have re­neged from the As­so­ci­a­tion and is li­able for penal­ties that may be fit."

Forde said that the rul­ing was hand­ed down by the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee at a meet­ing held on Feb­ru­ary 14 and the four mem­bers had ten days to lodge an ap­peal and that time has ex­pired–which means that the sus­pen­sions are in full ef­fect.

Forde point­ed out that Champs Box­ing gym mem­ber­ship fees for this year were still out­stand­ing, while Mag­ic was a mem­ber and all its box­ers can en­ter and par­tic­i­pate in all the events that are or­gan­ised and sanc­tioned by the TTA­BA.

He said: "I hope that Champs will reg­is­ter its club so that its box­ers will be able to par­tic­i­pate in our events. The box­ers must not suf­fer for the ac­tions of the lead­ers of the gyms." (KC)