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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Zoff calls on Sancho to pay promised prize monies

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20160214

WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Pop­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty sports ad­min­is­tra­tor Roger "Zoff" Ce­les­tine is call­ing on for­mer Min­is­ter of Sports Brent San­cho to ho­n­our a com­mit­ment to pay prize monies amount­ing to $70,000 for an all fours tour­na­ment held to boost his cam­paign for last year's gen­er­al elec­tions.

Zoff who will cel­e­brate 37 years as an or­gan­is­er of sports and cul­tur­al events in the San Juan area to­mor­row, said he was ap­proached by the ex-T&T de­fend­er to put on crick­et, foot­ball and all fours events in the name of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment last year. All three events car­ried a whop­ping $201,000 bud­get which were to be shared as prize monies.

He com­plied to a re­quest by San­cho to sub­mit pro­pos­als for a $50,000 foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion that com­prised an open di­vi­sion, 40 and over play-off, an $81,000 crick­et tour­ney that fea­tured a 45 and over, men's open and women's league and an all fours com­pe­ti­tion for $70, 000.

He told the Guardian he has now found him­self fac­ing threats of law­suits, while oth­er teams and play­ers are promis­ing to ex­pose him on the pop­u­lar Ian Al­leyne or Be­yond the Tape pro­grammes as San­cho no longer takes his calls or re­sponds to his text mes­sages.

The vet­er­an ad­min­is­tra­tor said he was told by San­cho that all his mon­ey was used dur­ing his cam­paign last year and he could not pro­vide the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing to pay.From this amount, Zoff was not paid for the months of work he did in putting the tour­na­ments to­geth­er and en­sur­ing it ran smooth­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly.

"Dur­ing the tour­na­ments I cooked food and had drinks or­gan­ised but more so, was able to put on a num­ber of suc­cess­ful com­pe­ti­tions which car­ried the name The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Con­stituen­cy League and im­pressed the then sports min­is­ter," Zoff said.

His work­load in­clud­ed putting up huge ban­ners of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship con­tri­bu­tion to com­mu­ni­ty sports that al­so made him look good. San­cho has sinced paid the tag for the foot­ball ($50,000) tour­na­ment and was asked to give part pay­ment for the crick­et play-offs, which was dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced due to the help of cor­po­rate cit­i­zens British Gas T&T, Neil Go­sein and oth­ers where sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions came.

Through cor­po­rate T&T, Zoff was al­so able to dis­trib­ute tro­phies and medals and ac­cu­mu­late oth­er op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es such as tents and equip­ment etc. San­cho's re­luc­tance to pay the prize monies has left Zoff se­vere­ly stressed as he col­lapsed dur­ing the fi­nal of the all fours tour­ney, cit­ing con­cerns by play­ers for monies owed to them, which the vet­er­an ad­min­is­tra­tor did not have.

"For the first time in my life I have had to be avoid­ing peo­ple and giv­ing them promis­es for monies that were not forth­com­ing from San­cho. And on the night of the fi­nals of the all fours, I took it on so much that I passed out and had to be car­ried home by friends and sup­port­ers of teams," Zoff said.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, San­cho said he would have call back to give a re­sponse, but nev­er did and fur­ther calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered.


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