WAL­TER AL­IBEY

The three play­ers who broke camp be­fore the World Cup Qual­i­fi­er against Guatemala on Sep­tem­ber 2, re­ceived hefty fines, na­tion­al coach Stephen Hart said yes­ter­day.

The play­ers–mid­field­ers Kevin Moli­no and Jo­evin Jones, who play for Or­lan­do City and the Seat­tle Sounders in Amer­i­ca's Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) re­spec­tive­ly–and de­fend­er Mekeil Williams of the Col­orado Rapids that al­so cam­paigns in the MLS, broke the team's cur­few on In­de­pen­dence night (Au­gust 31st) to at­tend a boat cruise, with­out the knowl­edge of Hart and his tech­ni­cal staff.

Hart ex­plained yes­ter­day that the mat­ter was dealt with as a team the morn­ing af­ter by hand­ing the play­ers heavy fines, say­ing it is the way mat­ters like those are nor­mal­ly han­dled.

Hart said he want­ed to get on with the mat­ter at heart which was qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup. "I can as­sure you the fines were hefty, af­ter that we just got on with game. It was ac­tu­al­ly the first time it has hap­pened un­der my reign and not like it hap­pens all the time. How­ev­er, I can as­sure you that if it hap­pens again, more dras­tic ac­tions will be tak­en against the play­ers" Hart ex­plained.

The is­sue has since gained the at­ten­tion of the me­dia and the pub­lic, with con­cerns be­ing raised about ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion for the play­ers.

Con­tact­ed, pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion David John-Williams said he was ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a re­port on the mat­ter this evening (yes­ter­day ). He told the Trinidad Guardian that while he did not want to com­ment on the is­sue un­til he re­ceives the re­port, he felt very dis­ap­point­ed by what had hap­pened. And when quizzed on whether he felt it may have had an ef­fect on the per­for­mance of the team, John-Williams said: "It may have. You can nev­er know if that may have af­fect­ed the way the team played that night. It was very pos­si­ble"

The T&T team came from a goal down to draw with Guatemala 2-2 in front a sold-out crowd at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, with the left foot­ed Jones (Jo­evin) get­ting the dou­ble strike to earn his team the vi­tal point to ad­vance to the Fi­nal Round of the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fi­er, Con­ca­caf Zone.

It is un­der­stood the play­ers are like­ly to be sent to the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee up­on in­ves­ti­ga­tion. But Hart, when quizzed on whether the play­ers should re­ceive ad­di­tion­al pun­ish­ment, said "That is en­tire­ly up to the FA to de­cide. We have dealt with it as a team but I can­not say what the FA should or should not do."