A last-ditch at­tempt to get mem­bers of the Unit­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) to drop its le­gal bat­tle against foot­ball’s world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA, to re­move a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee that was ap­point­ed to gov­ern the af­fairs of lo­cal foot­ball on March 27, seems to be gain­ing trac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed that a pe­ti­tion re­quir­ing the sig­na­tures of the mem­ber­ship has al­ready re­ceived more than 50 per cent sup­port of the 49 del­e­gates, who can make de­ci­sions in­clu­sive of pend­ing sig­na­tures of the Women’s Foot­ball League (WoLF), al­though its pres­i­dent Su­san Joseph-War­rick is a vice pres­i­dent of Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive, which was FI­FA re­moved on March 17.

Al­so ex­pect­ed to sign on the dot­ted line are East­ern Coun­ties Foot­ball Union pres­i­dent Sher­win Dy­er, the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA), the To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TFA) and the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) among many oth­ers, along with oth­er sup­port from clubs in the T&T Su­per League (TTSL)and the T&T Pro League. Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League’s (SS­FL) in­ter­im pres­i­dent Philip Fras­er said he will first take the re­quest to his mem­ber­ship be­fore he can sign for or against.

Both Brent San­cho, chair­man of the T&T Pro League and Mike Awai, a Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer at Pro League cam­paign­ers AC Port-of-Spain, has said that with 51 per cent sup­port of the mem­ber­ship, a re­quest can be made to the chair­man of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, busi­ness­man Robert Hadad to call an emer­gency gen­er­al meet­ing, from which a de­ci­sion can be made to seek the court’s ap­proval to stop the ac­tion of the oust­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers - for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents - Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip, which has put the coun­try in a po­si­tion to be sanc­tioned by FI­FA.

San­cho said al­so that with 75 per cent of the sup­port of the foot­ball mem­ber­ship, the Unit­ed TTFA group can be stopped out­right­ly, as they would not be rep­re­sent­ing the wish­es of the ma­jor­i­ty of the mem­bers.

On­ly on Wednes­day, a let­ter from FI­FA’s sec­re­tary gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura warned the Unit­ed TTFA that if they did not com­ply with the FI­FA Statutes, and ac­cept the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) based in Zurich, Switzer­land, as the ju­ris­dic­tion for set­tling the dis­pute be­tween the par­ties, then the coun­try faces sanc­tions.

Samoura al­so gave the Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive a dead­line date of Sep­tem­ber 16, 2020 to take its mat­ter out of the T&T High Court in Port-of-Spain.

Mean­while, in an un­ex­plain­able twist, Kei­th Look Loy, the man re­spon­si­ble for the for­ma­tion of the Unit­ed TTFA, sought sug­ges­tions from the mem­ber­ship of his club FC San­ta Rosa, via Face­book yes­ter­day, on whether they should con­tin­ue their fight with the FI­FA, or if they should sur­ren­der and let the FI­FA have its way.

Wal­lace, pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed TTFA, said he be­lieves Look Loy must have been test­ing the wa­ters to see what their sup­port was like. He lat­er reaf­firmed his team’s firm stance against FI­FA, say­ing they are to meet soon, in the wake of Wednes­day threat­en­ing let­ter from FI­FA.

Chris­tine Hoyte, WoLF’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Board of the TTFA, said yes­ter­day that a de­ci­sion was tak­en to sign the pe­ti­tion as the WoLF doesn’t sup­port the coun­try be­ing banned.

Hoyte said: "This is a mat­ter be­tween the Unit­ed TTFA and the FI­FA so we don’t feel that the coun­try, which has a num­ber of young peo­ple pur­su­ing dreams in foot­ball, should suf­fer for that. It would take away the dream from young peo­ple and leave them with no oth­er al­ter­na­tive. There are al­so young play­ers seek­ing pro­fes­sion­al con­tracts and schol­ar­ships abroad and their his­to­ry in the sport here will de­ter­mine if they will be suc­cess­ful or not.”

Hoyte, a for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er, made it clear that WoLF’s goal is firm­ly to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of women foot­ball in T&T.

Dy­er, who is set to be chal­lenged for the top po­si­tion in the east­ern coun­ties, said he heard about the pe­ti­tion and he is im­pa­tient­ly wait­ing to sign it, say­ing he will not sup­port the coun­try be­ing sanc­tioned and will al­so nev­er sup­port any­thing Look Loy is in­volved in.