Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of sign­ing doc­u­ments that will en­sure the move­ment of the Grand­par­ents Law from one point to the next.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), Kieron Ed­wards, made this rev­e­la­tion on Sat­ur­day via the I-95.5FM Ra­dio pro­gramme, say­ing the doc­u­ments are be­fore the Pres­i­dent right now, and are in need of sig­na­tures to be pro­claimed.

With the T&T team well in­to the fi­nal round of the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers, the law will make avail­able more play­ers of T&T parent­age who can don the red, white, and black.

“We have about eight play­ers who have shown in­ter­est, not just with the se­nior team, but we’re talk­ing 6-26, but we’ll fo­cus on the se­nior team for now. We are en­gag­ing play­ers to get their doc­u­men­ta­tion ready to hope­ful­ly get them in for that win­dow,” Ed­wards said.

“But we have to un­der­stand the cul­ture of foot­ball and sports, in terms of it’s not just say­ing that it is pro­claimed, and you have them, there are doc­u­ments to be pre­sent­ed, and there are trans­fers to be made by FI­FA. If it’s pro­claimed in time, it could hap­pen in time. It’s not pro­claimed just yet. It’s by the Pres­i­dent now, and we’re hop­ing to have it pro­claimed soon­er rather than lat­er.

“I hope that when we’re fin­ished with this in­ter­view, I can get a phone call from the Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts, say­ing that it’s pro­claimed and we’re ready to go to the next step with it, which is the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

T&T is one of the coun­tries in the Caribbean and wider foot­ball en­vi­ron­ment, not to be us­ing the grand­par­ents' law. To date, in two qual­i­fy­ing match­es, the coun­try’s se­nior foot­ballers are on a point from six, which presents a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion where they need to win their next four match­es to qual­i­fy au­to­mat­i­cal­ly for the World Cup.

Be­sides that, they need­ed to be one of the two best sec­ond-placed fin­ish­ers that will en­ter the in­ter­con­fed­er­a­tion play-offs in March next year. Against Cu­ra­cao at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, T&T was held to a goal­less tie. But four days lat­er in Kingston, the Reg­gae Boyz whipped T&T 2-0.

They will next face Bermu­da away on Oc­to­ber 10, be­fore fac­ing Cu­ra­cao in a re­turn match on Oc­to­ber 14 at the Es­ta­dion Er­gi­ol­lio Ha­to, Willem­stad.

Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke’s men will trav­el to Mi­a­mi for a camp ahead of those two match­es.

“Just yes­ter­day (Fri­day), I dis­cussed with coach Yorke and the man­ag­er Richard Piper on how we’re go­ing about this next win­dow, so we will be in camp in Mi­a­mi. I don’t want to say too much about coach Yorke’s plans when it comes to the ac­tu­al team, but the team will be in camp in Mi­a­mi for the Bermu­da game, and then we head to Bermu­da and then Cu­ra­cao,” Ed­wards said.

“I be­lieve all the lo­cal­ly-based play­ers who are part of the pro­vi­sion­al squad are ac­tive in the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup. With­in the Cen­tral FC camp, we have Mar­vin Phillip, Jo­evin Jones, Alvin Jones and Isa­iah Lee, and then we have the Gar­cias (Isa­iah and Justin) and Kevin Moli­no, and they are with the De­fence Force, so I be­lieve all the lo­cal play­ers are ac­tive cur­rent­ly.”

Mean­while, Ed­wards wel­comed an of­fer by the for­mer Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent and FI­FA vice pres­i­dent, Austin Jack Warn­er, to as­sist the T&T team on its jour­ney to the World Cup. Ed­wards, who ad­mit­ted to hav­ing a good friend­ship with Warn­er, said he is will­ing to lis­ten to any­one from T&T with an idea on foot­ball.