Michael Awai a stake­hold­er in lo­cal foot­ball and the for­mer AC Port of Spain Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Man­ag­er agrees with the de­ci­sion by Min­is­ter of Health, Dr Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to blank per­mis­sion to the As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment or­gan­is­ers for the start of their ten-club com­pe­ti­tion at this time.

This is de­spite Awai be­ing the own­er of one of the teams ex­pect­ed to be in­volved in the com­pe­ti­tion, AC Port-of-Spain.

On May 1, the As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment Di­rec­tor Kieron Ed­wards wrote to the Min­istry of Health propos­ing a tour­na­ment to be played at La Hor­quet­ta Recre­ation Ground which would have fea­tured on­ly ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed play­ers, staff and of­fi­cials.

Among the oth­er clubs who were set to com­pete in the first lo­cal foot­ball tour­na­ment since March 2020 were 2019 As­cen­sion and Pro League cham­pi­ons De­fence Force, Po­lice FC, Cunu­pia FC, West Forte FC, Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers FC, Mal­abar FC, Cen­tral FC,

Cen­tral Soc­cer World FC and De­porti­vo PF.

As an added safe­ty mea­sure, the tour­na­ment or­gan­is­ers al­so hint­ed that on­ly ful­ly-vac­ci­nat­ed fans were to be al­lowed as they in­tend­ed to ap­ply strict Covid-19 pro­to­cols with the help of the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice.

Over­all, the re­quest was sup­port­ed by a list of some 30 COVID-19 guide­lines to be fol­lowed by all, to en­sure the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of all in­volved, ei­ther tak­ing part in the games, of­fi­ci­at­ing, or sup­port­ing.

How­ev­er on May 3, in re­ply to the re­quest to the tour­na­ment fi­nanced by for­mer T&TFA pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Richard Fer­gu­son, Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh in­formed Ed­wards that an ex­emp­tion had been de­nied.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh in his re­ply said: As you may be aware, the Emer­gency Pow­ers (No.2) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021 (“the Reg­u­la­tions”), as amend­ed by the Emer­gency Pow­ers (Vari­a­tion of Cur­few Times No.5) Or­der, 2021 and the Min­istry of Health’s Me­dia Re­lease (State­ment No.12), pro­vide in­ter alia:

3. (1) Dur­ing the pe­ri­od of pub­lic emer­gency be­tween the hours of 5.01 am to 9.59 pm. Every day, a per­son shall not –

(a) gath­er in any pub­lic place un­less the gath­er­ing –

(i) for the pur­pose of the ser­vices is spec­i­fied in sub-reg­u­la­tion (10);

(ii) does not ex­ceed ten per­sons at a time

(b)…

(m) par­tic­i­pate in any team sports,

(o) op­er­ate any sports clubs, in­clud­ing cy­cling, run­ning, hik­ing, swim­ming, golf, ten­nis, foot­ball, rug­by, and hock­ey clubs ex­cept where au­tho­rised by the Min­is­ter.

I have re­ceived your re­quest for an ex­emp­tion pur­suant to the Reg­u­la­tions, to com­mence the As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment of T&T and as fur­ther de­lin­eat­ed in your let­ter.

How­ev­er, due to the com­mu­ni­ty spread of the Delta Vari­ant of Covid-19, I am un­able to au­tho­rize the con­duct of said Tour­na­ment at this time.

Notwith­stand­ing, due con­sid­er­a­tion may be giv­en to your re­quest in the fu­ture, end­ed Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh’s re­ply which was copied to the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe.

And com­ment­ing on the de­ci­sion made, Awai first not­ed that the ap­proach used by the or­gan­is­ers maybe been a prob­lem.

He said, “I think that Richard Fer­gu­son in his wis­dom, I thought that he should have had a joint ef­fort with the T&TFA ap­proach­ing gov­ern­ment.

“I be­lieve he ap­proached the gov­ern­ment on his own and copied the T&TFA from what I read in the news­pa­pers but he has every right to ask for what he is ask­ing for as there is every rea­son why he wants the foot­ball to be played.”

“He is con­cerned about the young peo­ple in the coun­try and I think that is very no­ble but at the same time we do have a pan­dem­ic, we do have a Delta Vari­ant and 71 peo­ple died in a week al­beit old­er peo­ple but the fact of the mat­ter is that peo­ple are dy­ing and un­less and un­til the coun­try gets to a point of where they can have what is call herd im­mu­ni­ty then I don’t think any sport will play.”

“Yes, they will have a na­tion­al team train­ing in the Home of Foot­ball se­clud­ed, yes they will bring a team from Pana­ma and play and stay in one place with no vis­i­tors etc, but once you start to say that okay we can play foot­ball every Tom, Dick and Har­ry will play foot­ball in the sa­van­nah, on the streets and it will be un­con­trolled and then we can have spikes there and then we may have a prob­lem again na­tion­al­ly, and I think that’s the rea­son why the Min­istry of Health has been very very care­ful and very me­thod­i­cal and thought­ful in their whole ap­proach in this whole mess as we call the covid pan­dem­ic .”

I think the in­dis­ci­pline of the peo­ple in the coun­try as well has played its role in the de­ci­sion as could you imag­ine if they open the beach­es this week­end what is go­ing to hap­pen, and foot­ball is not as bad as the beach, but just kind of get a que from that kind of ex­cite­ment and you will get to un­der­stand what it is.

Every piece of green grass in this coun­try would be cov­ered with peo­ple play­ing foot­ball, no masks, peo­ple just play­ing and we could just have peo­ple get­ting ill all over again and we will have a big spike and then we will all be in a mess again.”

he added, "So I do think it’s a good thing not to start the foot­ball now and quite frankly I think Jan­u­ary is not a bad time to start be­cause gen­er­al­ly, it has nev­er been our prac­tice to play foot­ball in De­cem­ber, and No­vem­ber is al­most done.

“So I think they can wait, plan and mon­i­tor and re­view and then af­ter a while they can say okay we can start to play foot­ball Jan­u­ary 1.

In re­sponse to Min­is­ter Deyals­ing’s de­ci­sion, a group of play­ers, coach­es and oth­er foot­ball of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed to the streets of Port-of-Spain, in­clud­ing at the of­fice of Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe on Thurs­day morn­ing, to air their con­cerns on why foot­ball is not be­ing played.

The group is be­ing led by Michael De Four, coach of Cunu­pia FC and oth­ers, call­ing them­selves con­cerned cit­i­zens of foot­ball.

Ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia Sports re­port on Wednes­day due to the lim­i­ta­tions to protest or march, the group has print­ed jer­seys they be­lieve will help con­vey their mes­sage.

De Four in­sist­ed that his mem­bers are not in­to the busi­ness of break­ing the laws, hence why they’re not play­ing foot­ball al­though the sport is al­leged­ly go­ing on at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions across the coun­try.

"You said, 'vac­ci­nate to op­er­ate', that was a gov­ern­ment slo­gan, but here it is an en­ti­ty, is say­ing hey, every­body has been vac­ci­nat­ed and we’re ready to go, and you’re telling them no. So, we have a lit­tle is­sue with that, be­cause the less we play foot­ball, the more the in­dus­try crum­bles and crum­bles, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to re­cov­er from where we were, or at­tain the goals we would like to at­tain.”

De Four plead­ed, “I would like the Min­is­ter of Health and the Sports Min­is­ter to show some com­pas­sion to­wards the sports fra­ter­ni­ty and work with us as sports en­thu­si­asts, at least to over­come this hur­dle".