South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion club and run­ners-up in last sea­son's bmo­bile Na­tion­al Su­per League T&TEC FC is hop­ing to be­come the newest mem­ber of the T&T Pro League when the 2010 sea­son kicks off in April. In the past, one way of gain­ing en­try to the Pro League was by win­ning the Su­per League af­ter which the club had the op­tion to ap­ply for ad­mit­tance– as was the case of WASA in 2007. How­ev­er, the "Wa­ter Boys" af­ter some dis­cus­sions with their Sports Club Man­age­ment Board and the com­pa­ny's man­age­ment staff de­cid­ed against do­ing so.

Last sea­son the league ti­tle was won by bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic Su­per League and with the "East­ern Li­ons" al­ready hav­ing a team in the Pro League the op­tion of step­ping up to the Pro League now rests with the "Elec­tric­i­ty Boys," who were Su­per League debu­tants last sea­son. T&TEC's sports club vice-pres­i­dent and team man­ag­er Pe­ter Mo­han is con­fi­dent that the team can make a suc­cess­ful climb up to the Pro League. Mo­han says he be­lieves that the club has what it takes to be at the top lev­el, fol­low­ing its first year in the Su­per League. "We did pret­ty well in our first year of the Su­per League and we be­lieve that the on­ly way we can get the cov­er­age in foot­ball is by join­ing the Pro League," said Mo­han.

"Based on our ex­pe­ri­ence and the young tal­ent­ed play­ers we have, we be­lieve that T&TEC can bring val­ue to the League and hold our own at that lev­el," con­tin­ued the T&TEC FC man­ag­er. T&TEC is coached by for­mer T&T strik­er Dex­ter Cyrus who has Desmond "Dako" Bai­ley as his as­sis­tant.Among the no­table play­ers on their ros­ter are dis­card­ed na­tion­al duo, de­fend­er An­tho­ny Nor­eiga and strik­er Joel Bai­ley as well as ex-Unit­ed Petrotrin front­man Sylvester Tees­dale. Com­ment­ing on the in­ter­est ex­pressed by T&TEC, Pro League chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dex­ter Skeene said, "The con­tin­ued in­ter­est shown by clubs proves the pop­u­lar­i­ty and trans­paren­cy of the league. "As the in­ter­ests con­tin­ue to grow the league al­so con­tin­ues to strate­gi­cal­ly look at ex­pan­sion." Skeene not­ed that the Pro League board has set a dead­line of Jan­u­ary 28 by which time all new clubs must ful­fill their re­quire­ments to be con­sid­ered as a Pro League club.

"These re­quire­ments in­clude af­fil­i­a­tion/reg­is­tra­tion fees, se­cured home venue, youth pro­grammes while the club must al­so show that they can cov­er play­er salaries over the pe­ri­od of the sea­son. "So far the (T&TEC) man­age­ment have been very sup­port­ive," said Mo­han. "We are in the process of putting to­geth­er all the re­quire­ments for the League which we will sub­mit to our man­age­ment at T&TEC and look for­ward to their ap­proval." He added, "T&TEC is a lead­ing ser­vice provider and we al­so want to show that we are a lead­ing en­ti­ty in sport as well. As a mem­ber of the cor­po­rate sec­tor we are al­so about giv­ing back to cul­ture and sport in T&T."