T&T could be back in the fold of FI­FA and be among the teams to con­test the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary rounds as well as the FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF World Cup Qual­i­fiers af­ter all.

At least so it seems, from a con­sen­sus of the sport's mem­ber­ship, who is set for the Oc­to­ber 25 Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) to lob­by for the re­turn of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, as well as the re­moval of the cur­rent foot­ball ex­ec­u­tive.

Unit­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent William Wal­lace, de­spite their tri­umph in the High Court last week, has en­sured that the mem­ber­ship will de­cide on the way for­ward for the sport.

Wal­lace on the I95.5FM An­dre Bap­tiste pro­gramme on Sat­ur­day fend­ed off a call by East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards for the agen­da to in­clude the re­moval of the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive, as well as the re­turn of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, which com­pris­es busi­ness­men Robert Hadad and Nigel Ro­mano, and At­tor­ney Judy Daniel, say­ing while the agen­da can­not have any in­clu­sions, the na­ture of the meet­ing would al­low for any pro­pos­al.

The EFA boss in a doc­u­ment on Fri­day gave rea­sons why the propo­si­tion to bring back the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and re­move Wal­lace and his team of Clynt Tay­lor and Joseph Sam Phillip was cru­cial and nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, Wal­lace sought to clear the air, say­ing af­ter the rul­ing on Tues­day last, they im­me­di­ate­ly pro­posed an agen­da, date and time for the EGM to his Board mem­bers and nine out of 13 agreed.

He said ini­tial­ly sev­en mem­bers out of 13 agreed, which still rep­re­sent­ed a ma­jor­i­ty but sub­se­quent to that, they got nine out of the 13 mem­bers that re­spond­ed agree­ing with the pro­posed date and agen­da. He ex­plained al­so that he spoke to Ed­wards about his pro­pos­al and ex­plained that be­cause the ma­jor­i­ty of the mem­bers had agreed to the agen­da and date, there could be no ad­di­tions to the agen­da.

"How­ev­er, what I in­di­cat­ed is that be­cause of the na­ture of the agen­da, it is broad as it is wide. It said to dis­cuss the way for­ward, so that way for­ward can in­clude as many things as is pos­si­ble. If it means get­ting any im­ped­i­ments out of the way, that can be dis­cussed. The meet­ing is sched­uled for the 25th," Wal­lace said.

At­tempts to make con­tact with Wal­lace, yes­ter­day, proved fu­tile.

Mean­while, Richard Quan Chan, the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (SFA) pres­i­dent said the re­moval of the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive and re­turn of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee has al­ways been the ob­vi­ous thing if T&T is to con­test the qual­i­fiers of both the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and World Cup Qual­i­fiers.

"This is what I got from the agen­da- 'dis­cussing the way for­ward'. Once we ac­cept the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and al­low it to do what FI­FA wants, in­clud­ing sort­ing out the TTFA Statutes and bring it in line with that of FI­FA, we should be back as a FI­FA mem­ber and back in the qual­i­fiers," said Quan Chan, who dis­missed the rul­ing of High Court Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in to recog­nise the Unit­ed TTFA as the le­git­i­mate body to man­age T&T foot­ball.

"One of my ma­jor con­cerns with Jus­tice Gob­in was her be­ing emo­tion­al by see­ing FI­FA's chal­lenge as one that was push­ing aside the law of the coun­try and push­ing her aside as an in­di­vid­ual, as op­posed to her rul­ing on the ba­sis of the Law and the Statutes."

Mon­day, the Court of Ap­peal is ex­pect­ed to hear an ap­peal from FI­FA over Gob­in’s ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the case.

FI­FA will not have any de­fence, as it did in the High Court last week but foot­ball pun­dits are say­ing it will be prece­dence if the Ap­pel­late judges will over­turn the rul­ing of the High Court.

Quan Chan said he lost con­fi­dence in the Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion with the con­tracts of na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick, mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pe­ter Miller, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han, the Avec Sports deal and the Laven­der/Ari­ma Velo­drome ini­tia­tive.

Mean­while, Ja­maal Shabazz, coach and own­er of T&T Pro League out­fit Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed said for the coun­try to have a fu­ture we must re­turn to FI­FA.

He be­lieves that dis­cus­sion has to be held on the pro­pose ad­di­tion to the agen­da, not­ing that with the di­verse views and an­tag­o­nism among the fra­ter­ni­ty for the fu­ture of the sport, there must find a path­way go­ing for­ward.

"Though I may have dif­fer­ing views to Wal­lace and com­pa­ny, I am still will­ing to dis­cuss with them a rea­son why T&T must re­turn to the fold of FI­FA," said Shabazz.