Af­ter the re­cent fall­out be­tween the lo­cal wa­ter po­lo com­mu­ni­ty and the Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASATT), Ryan Smith, a for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tor of the sport, is lead­ing a call for wa­ter po­lo to have its own au­ton­o­my.

With the sup­port of the wa­ter po­lo com­mu­ni­ty, Smith, an ex­ec­u­tive of one of the sport’s lead­ing clubs, Roy­hill Seals, said the sport wants its own as­so­ci­a­tion, as he be­lieves the com­mu­ni­ty has, for more than two decades, been left out of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing when it comes to wa­ter po­lo.

Last month, ASATT raised con­cerns about a wa­ter po­lo-ini­ti­at­ed Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Dis­cov­er H2O Po­lo Pro­gramme held from Au­gust 3 to Sep­tem­ber 4 at com­mu­ni­ty pools in Mal­oney, D’Abadie/Mal­abar, and the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre (NAC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, cit­ing that it was not con­sult­ed about the pro­gramme as the par­ent body.

ASATT pres­i­dent Shawn Pouchet said he had no prob­lem with the pro­gramme and the ini­tia­tive but ex­pressed con­cerns on­ly about the way in which it was done, say­ing it was done with­out prop­er pro­ce­dure. “What I have a prob­lem with is the pro­ce­dure by which it was done, be­cause when you come to me to say, ‘Well, we want ASATT sup­port, and we would like coach­es to come from ASATT, and ASATT to in­voice us, and we will pay ASATT to then pay the coach­es.’ I have asked to see the coach’s man­u­al, and I have not seen the project pro­pos­al.”

Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal aquat­ic boss, “I do not know what the scope of the coach­ing was, but when I saw the list of coach­es, the ques­tion was sim­ply asked: what is the se­lec­tion pro­ce­dure? How did the list come about? So you see my is­sues as an as­so­ci­a­tion: how could I, in my good mind, sign up for some­thing that is very skewed to one side? So we wrote a let­ter to the min­istry re­port­ing that. I did not go to the press.”

Smith’s call is be­ing sup­port­ed by a group of par­ents of wa­ter po­lo play­ers seek­ing sig­na­tures on a pe­ti­tion for the sport to have its au­ton­o­my. Smith said this dis­play ex­plains the state of ex­as­per­a­tion by the com­mu­ni­ty, not­ing, how­ev­er, that the chal­lenge will be on the world gov­ern­ing body to make a de­ci­sion for their plight to be recog­nised and ac­cept­ed.

“World Aquat­ics ac­tu­al­ly has the au­thor­i­ty to say they can de­cide, ac­cord­ing to their re­vised con­sti­tu­tion, that they can de­cide if more than one fed­er­a­tion or one as­so­ci­a­tion can be from a coun­try for these dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines, es­pe­cial­ly if it is a gov­ern­ment de­ci­sion. What I can say is that al­though they tend not to do that, the pos­si­bil­i­ty is there, be­cause we see it with oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions. For in­stance, Swim­ming South Africa just broke off and broke in­to Swim­ming South Africa and Wa­ter­po­lo South Africa,” Smith re­vealed.

He en­sured, “For ex­am­ple, we have USA Wa­ter­po­lo, which works with USA Aquat­ics, but they have au­ton­o­my, but one is af­fil­i­at­ed with World Aquat­ics. So the af­fil­i­a­tion to World Aquat­ics is not the is­sue. The is­sue is hav­ing the au­ton­o­my of be­ing able to gov­ern your­self and be­ing able to com­mu­ni­cate with World Aquat­ics sep­a­rate­ly. So there doesn’t need to be a sep­a­rate vote at World Aquat­ics.”

“So it should have to be who gets two votes, one for swim­ming, one for wa­ter po­lo, or one for aquat­ics and one for wa­ter po­lo; how­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble that we can have just the au­ton­o­my to run the sport in the coun­try with full gov­er­nance, rather than swim­ming per­sons be­ing at the head of an or­gan­i­sa­tion and mak­ing the de­ci­sions for wa­ter po­lo.”

When quizzed if the wa­ter po­lo com­mu­ni­ty in­tends to write to the world gov­ern­ing body, Smith said, very soon. “I would say by the end of Oc­to­ber or by the end of No­vem­ber to get those wheels in mo­tion. So that we could have be­gun the process of do­ing that and hope­ful­ly be suc­cess­ful. The lev­el of au­ton­o­my will have to be dis­cussed in terms of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing or full af­fil­i­a­tion rights or some­thing along those lines.”

“But I would say, per­son­al­ly, I’ve had that dis­cus­sion with the pres­i­dent of ASATT al­ready, and we will take it from there to­wards com­ing to an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion, and if nec­es­sary, per­haps some­thing more,” Smith con­clud­ed.