At­tor­neys for the oust­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) Dr Emir Crowne and Matthew GW Gayle have of­fi­cial­ly file an ap­pli­ca­tion to be­gin pro­ceed­ings of their le­gal bat­tle through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) on Mon­day, against the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball, the Fed­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (FI­FA) on be­half of their clients.

Gayle said the re­quired $1,000 Swiss Francs, which rep­re­sent the fee for CAS, was paid on Mon­day but he made it clear, how­ev­er, that an­oth­er un­known amount that would rep­re­sent fees for the ar­biters, is to be paid soon.

Fol­low­ing a de­ci­sion by FI­FA to ap­point a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to run the af­fairs of T&T foot­ball did not go down too well with for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his ad­min­is­tra­tion which com­prised his three vice pres­i­dents — Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph 'Sam' Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for women’s foot­ball in T&T fol­low­ing their suc­cess­ful de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion on No­vem­ber 24, 2019.

Gayle said the ap­pli­ca­tion was draft­ed up some­time now and was just await­ing the CAS fee, which was paid up.

On March 27, FI­FA in­stalled busi­ness­men Robert Hadad and as chair­man, re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano, as well as En­vi­ron­men­tal lawyer Judy Daniel, who is deputy chair­man of the cash-strapped ad­min­is­tra­tion. Two oth­er mem­bers to be se­lect­ed by a joint team of FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF, is ex­pect­ed to be named soon.

Wal­lace who won the hearts of vot­ers at the TTFA elec­tions in No­vem­ber said his ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed lit­tle to no fund­ing in the cof­fers of the David John-Williams-led as­so­ci­a­tion when it as­sumed of­fice and has al­so faced mount­ing bills and a debt that moved from $16 mil­lion to $50 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, af­ter en­ter­ing two ques­tion­able deals with in­ter­na­tion­al sports­wear com­pa­ny Avec Sports from the Unit­ed King­dom and Laven­der, a glob­al ar­chi­tec­ture com­pa­ny, the Wal­lace and his vice pres­i­dents made a des­per­ate call on mem­bers of the pub­lic to show their fi­nan­cial sup­port through a ‘go fund me' ini­tia­tive launched on March 30, which ben­e­fit­ted from the con­tri­bu­tions of US$2,000 pro­vid­ed by the T&T Su­per League, among oth­er do­na­tions.

The lat­est fig­ures in the go-fund-me ac­count yes­ter­day shows it has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed a to­tal of US$3,155. The ac­count is set-up to raise an es­ti­mat­ed TT$300,000 to $500,000 to un­der­write the cost for their le­gal chal­lenge against FI­FA.

To date, the T&T Su­per League (TTSL), Sec­ondary School Foot­ball League (SS­FL), North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA), T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFRA), the T&T Women’s League of Foot­ball (WoLF) and T&T Amer­i­can Youth Soc­cer Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTAYSO) have all come out an of­fered writ­ten sup­port to Wal­lace and his vice pres­i­dents af­ter FI­FA's de­ci­sion on March 17, to send a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to gov­ern T&T foot­ball.

The FI­FA let­ter from FI­FA's sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura to Rame­sha Ramd­han, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA in part reads:" Un­der these se­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, and in ac­cor­dance with ar­ti­cle 8 para­graph 2 of the Fi­fa statutes (which fore­sees that ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions may, un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, be re­moved from of­fice by the Fi­fa Coun­cil in con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant con­fed­er­a­tion and re­placed by a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od), the Bu­reau of the Coun­cil de­cid­ed, on 17 March 2020, to ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for the TTFA.

Con­tact­ed on Mon­day for a re­sponse, Wal­lace told Guardian Me­dia Sports that every com­ment from them will come through their lawyers.

Mean­while, Hadad is prepar­ing to take up the job he was giv­en by FI­FA when the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic ends. He has since been li­ais­ing with TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramd­han for in­for­ma­tion that will lead to the com­mit­tee achiev­ing its man­date suc­cess­ful­ly.

Hadad said his first as­sign­ment will be to pay the staff of the TTFA their salaries for last month (March).