No one wants to is­sue a pub­lic mea cul­pa. In de­cid­ing to speak out on any mat­ter, two ques­tions be­come im­por­tant: Who am I afraid of? What am I afraid of? Once you have an­swered those two ques­tions, you can de­cide whether to speak out or not.

​There is al­ways fi­nan­cial ten­sion and a strug­gle to bal­ance bud­gets. An ob­jec­tive re­view of the his­to­ry of sport in the twin-is­land re­pub­lic will show that gov­ern­ing bod­ies and sport or­gan­i­sa­tions al­ways strug­gle fi­nan­cial­ly. Sub­si­dies from suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments and, to a less­er ex­tent, cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship re­main the ex­clu­sive fund­ing op­tions.

​Notwith­stand­ing decades of at­tempts to re­form how sports are fund­ed, the struc­tur­al ar­chi­tec­ture of sports fi­nance re­mains un­changed. I have sat on a num­ber of com­mit­tees over the years, in­clud­ing one tasked with re­view­ing the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) and eval­u­at­ing the sta­tus of a long-pro­posed Sport Com­mis­sion.

​Rec­om­men­da­tions were sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Sport. Yet, po­lite con­ver­sa­tions con­tin­ue ad nau­se­am in an en­vi­ron­ment of su­per­fi­cial pleas­antries and per­for­ma­tive in­ter­ac­tions. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t ag­gra­vate the sta­tus quo. Play the game. Stay in your lane. It can be a suf­fo­cat­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

​The dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial en­vi­ron­ment de­mands that hard and tough de­ci­sions be made. It is al­so time to re­view the role and func­tion of SporTT. Is there a du­pli­ca­tion of ef­fort and re­sources? Can a strength­ened Min­istry of Sport be more ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient? Should the con­cept of a Sport Com­mis­sion, in­stead of a Sport Com­pa­ny, be shelved?

​If, at the end of the day, the con­clu­sion is that the sta­tus quo should re­main, then so be it. How­ev­er, let it not be said that it’s okay to re­view na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies, na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions, and the state of sport in T&T, and not in­clude the struc­ture of the sport in­dus­try and ecosys­tem, in­clu­sive of SporTT.

​With re­spect to to­day’s top­ic, I ref­er­ence a past news­pa­per head­line: “SporTT be­gin tran­si­tion to SCOTT.” The Trinidad News­day ar­ti­cle, dat­ed No­vem­ber 23, 2017, quot­ed Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho say­ing he hoped that over the fol­low­ing three months, the first roadmap would be com­plete as SporTT be­gan its tran­si­tion to the Sports Com­mis­sion of T&T. Ca­ma­cho was the chair­man of a nine-mem­ber Cab­i­net Com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to re­view and rec­om­mend changes for this tran­si­tion. (Re­minder: the writer was a mem­ber of said com­mit­tee).

Dis­cussing the com­mit­tee’s plans at the time, Ca­ma­cho stat­ed that struc­tur­al changes were im­per­a­tive: “We have to re­view the whole ad­min­is­tra­tion and struc­ture of sport ef­fec­tive­ly and make rec­om­men­da­tions on the way for­ward.”

​Where is that re­port? Were the rec­om­men­da­tions ac­cept­ed or not?

In June 2018, Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho, who had spent eight months as chair­man of the steer­ing com­mit­tee tasked to make rec­om­men­da­tions for the tran­si­tion from SporTT to the Sports Com­mis­sion of T&T, was ap­point­ed chair­man of SporTT, re­plac­ing Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine.

​​Here we are in 2026. The pres­sures are re­al, but what must not be lost are the op­por­tu­ni­ties to plant seeds for the fu­ture. We must view sport as a dy­nam­ic in­vest­ment in hu­man cap­i­tal and re­de­fine the fu­ture in T&T. We are at a full cir­cle mo­ment. An up­dat­ed process map­ping ex­er­cise is re­quired.

​Make it make sense.