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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Football’s membership gains support to stop court battle

by

Walter Alibey
1790 days ago
20200827
Central FC owner Brent Sancho and Pro League chairman

Central FC owner Brent Sancho and Pro League chairman

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.


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