Nigel Si­mon

For­mer Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League and T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA win­ners, North East Stars has been giv­en a one week grace by the Pro League board of di­rec­tors to se­cure a home venue for the 2010 sea­son. The de­ci­sion to give the Dar­ryl Ma­habir-owned Stars the ex­tra time to sort out its play­ing venue was tak­en at a board meet­ing held at the league's Curepe Of­fice, on Thurs­day. The meet­ing chaired by Pro League chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dex­ter Skeene and chair­man Lar­ry Ro­many al­so in­volved rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the ten clubs cur­rent­ly in the league.

Skeene said the three-and-a-half-hour meet­ing was very fruit­ful and the up­com­ing sea­son which kicks off on April 10, ten of the 11 clubs from last sea­son will be in­volve for cer­tain. These clubs are de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic, San Juan Jabloteh, Cale­do­nia, W Con­nec­tion, Ma Pau, De­fence Force, Po­lice, To­ba­go Unit­ed, St Ann's Rangers and FC South End.

Last month, South-based club Unit­ed Petrotrin with­drew from com­pet­ing due to fi­nan­cial prob­lems at the state-owned pe­tro­le­um com­pa­ny and there was thought that three oth­er clubs FC South End, To­ba­go Unit­ed and St Ann's Rangers may fol­low.

But fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's meet­ing Skeene not­ed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of South End, To­ba­go and Rangers were able to pro­vide the board with enough in­for­ma­tion to sat­is­fy their needs with re­gards to fi­nan­cial fund­ing to cater for play­ers' needs for an en­tire sea­son. As one of the ma­jor re­quire­ments a club wish­ing to be part of the Pro League must show that they can cov­er play­er salaries over the pe­ri­od of the sea­son while new clubs must al­so ful­fil re­quire­ments which in­clude af­fil­i­a­tion/reg­is­tra­tion fees, se­cured home venue, youth pro­grammes.

A for­mer na­tion­al play­er Skeene added, "North East Stars asked for a week to fi­nalise their venue af­ter they in­formed us that they have been hav­ing meet­ings with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. "Those meet­ings with the cor­po­ra­tion which have been cor­dial as stat­ed by Stars are to have the Ojoe Road Recre­ation Ground in San­gre Grande brought up to the re­quired Pro League stan­dards. Stars were pre­vi­ous­ly part of the league set up but opt­ed out of the 2009 due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of a home ground and while they plead­ed with the cor­po­ra­tion to up­grade the venue dur­ing that time it was not done.

But with for­mer na­tion­al play­ers Brent San­cho and Kevin Jef­frey now part of the new man­age­r­i­al re-struc­tur­ing at the club, it seems that the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion has had a change of heart and looks ready to have the venue ready for foot­ball by April 10. Ac­cord­ing to Skeene T&TEC Sports Club, last sea­son's run­ner-up in the bmo­bile Na­tion­al Su­per and the on­ly team that came pub­lic about its as­pi­ra­tions to join the pro­fes­sion­al ranks has asked for its ap­pli­ca­tion to be de­ferred un­til the 2011 sea­son. "They (T&TEC) have asked to be con­sid­ered for the 2011 sea­son in­stead in or­der to be able to ful­fil all the re­quire­ments of the league's ap­pli­ca­tion.