Both teams, the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), have ex­pressed op­ti­mism that the re­quest­ed fund­ing will be made avail­able to the Trinidad and To­ba­go’s se­nior men’s foot­ball team to par­tic­i­pate in the up­com­ing Con­ca­caf Na­tions League (CNL).

This fol­lows a meet­ing with SporTT and the TTFA at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sport yes­ter­day af­ter­noon in a tele­phone in­ter­view, SporTT chair­man Kester Lendor said, “We are ac­tive­ly work­ing with the TTFA. The TTFA sub­mit­ted a vo­lu­mi­nous amount of doc­u­ments, and our team at the SDP unit, head­ed by Mr Justin Lat­apy-George, has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to flesh out those doc­u­ments and ad­dress all the ex­pen­di­ture items in them. The process is on­go­ing, and they will meet again on Mon­day; that is, the SDP unit and the TTFA to con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sions, con­tin­ue the ex­changes and to find a way for­ward. What I can tell you is sig­nif­i­cant progress was made, and there is go­ing to be light at the end of the tun­nel.”

He was re­fer­ring to the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process for ex­pen­di­ture items re­lat­ing to years one and two of the se­nior men’s World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign, the se­nior women’s team’s World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign, and years two and three of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL).

How­ev­er, de­spite Lendore’s as­sur­ance, there re­mains a race against time, since T&T’s CNL cam­paign kicks off in 12 days time (Sep­tem­ber 24) with a trip to Ja­maica where the So­ca War­riors will take on Haiti, fol­lowed by a home game against the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic three days lat­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain. Over­all, the se­nior men’s team un­der head coach Derek King will play four CNL match­es in the up­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow, trav­el­ling to Willem­stad, Cu­raçao, on Oc­to­ber 1 to face the re­cent World Cup debu­tantes, ahead of a re­verse fix­ture on Oc­to­ber 4, in Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing out­side of the Rac­quet Cen­tre fol­low­ing the meet­ing, TTFA pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards was no clear­er on whether or not there was any pend­ing al­lo­ca­tion.

Ed­wards who emerged from the meet­ing which was ap­prox­i­mate­ly two-hour long, with sev­er­al TTFA ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, in­clud­ing first vice pres­i­dent Col­in Mur­ray, sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Os­mond Down­er, or­di­nary mem­bers Ryan Nunes, An­drew Boodoo and Ali­cia Austin and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ka­reem Paul said, “From our dis­cus­sions, the (SporTT) board is still there, so they would have their dis­cus­sions, but the best per­son in terms of say­ing ap­proval or not would be Mr Lendor, the chair of the SporTT. But the meet­ing was a fruit­ful one.”

Lendor, who had on­ly al­lowed two ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia Sports, be­fore re­treat­ing back in­to the meet­ing with oth­er SporTT of­fi­cials, said, it was im­per­a­tive to al­low the process to take its course.

“We have said that we should stay with­in our op­er­at­ing pa­ra­me­ters. So as a mea­sure of en­sur­ing that we don’t go out­side of our com­pli­ance pa­ra­me­ters, we have de­cid­ed to work with the NG­Bs so that we can en­sure that they achieve the com­pli­ance stan­dards,” he ex­plained.

Ahead of yes­ter­day’s meet­ing, the TTFA had asked the Sport Com­pa­ny to clar­i­fy any pub­lic con­fu­sion caused by a back-page head­line in the Ex­press news­pa­per on Sep­tem­ber 8: “SporTT re­jects TTFA’s fund­ing re­quest for Con­ca­caf Na­tions League—$2.5M set­back.”

Asked whether he re­ceived any as­sur­ance at the meet­ing that this would be done, Ed­wards was coy: “As you see, all doc­u­men­ta­tion we would have walked with just to bring clar­i­ty be­cause most of the re­ports were mix­ing truth with er­ror. I would stop short of say­ing any­one would have lied, but we know what would have come out in most of those re­ports and the rea­son why – to bring tur­moil on the sport. They (SporTT) would go through their process, and they would make the rel­e­vant state­ments in due course.”

How­ev­er, Lendor said, “Part of our meet­ing to­day was to em­pha­sise or re-em­pha­sise that there is no ac­ri­mo­ny be­tween us and the TTFA. As a sport com­pa­ny, we are man­dat­ed to work with all the NG­Bs. When there are is­sues or ques­tions re­lat­ed to com­pli­ance, it is not that we are here to be puni­tive. Yes, we will hold NG­Bs to com­pli­ance stan­dards, but at the same time, we have to try to work with them to en­sure that they meet our com­pli­ance thresh­olds. That meet­ing this morn­ing was to get to the point where we are on the road to achiev­ing stan­dards or com­pli­ance thresh­olds that we set.”

In ad­di­tion to the TTFA mem­bers, yes­ter­day’s meet­ing was al­so at­tend­ed by SporTT vice chair­man Shaun Teekas­ingh, CEO Arnold Ram, and di­rec­tors Adri­an Ali, Ndu-Bisi Hall, and Daryan Warn­er. SporTT com­mu­ni­ca­tions lead Natasha Nunez was al­so present as well as mem­bers of Sport De­vel­op­ment and Per­for­mance Unit, head­ed by Lat­apy-George.