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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Members defend their TTFA status

...EC­FU, VF­FOTT, Beach Foot­ball, SFA are mem­bers of TTFA

by

Keith Clement
1767 days ago
20200906
Ian Pritchard, one of the delegates for Eastern Counties Football Union.

Ian Pritchard, one of the delegates for Eastern Counties Football Union.

Walter Alibey

As the pe­ti­tions for the Sep­tem­ber 15 Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) gains mo­men­tum, ques­tions are be­ing asked about the sta­tus of some of the as­so­ci­a­tions who have signed as mem­bers and as del­e­gates.

The lat­est news from Kieron Ed­wards, pres­i­dent of East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) who de­liv­ered the pe­ti­tions said yes­ter­day, more mem­bers and del­e­gates have signed on for the meet­ing to take place.

The FI­FA dead­line is just nine days away for the for­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his team which com­pris­es vice pres­i­dents - Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip, to­geth­er with Kei­th Look Loy, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Su­per League and An­tho­ny Har­ford, the pres­i­dent of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA), to drop their le­gal bat­tle against FI­FA here in T&T High court and go back to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) which is based in Zurich, Switzer­land, ac­cord­ing to both FI­FA Statutes and the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion, or face sanc­tions.

In re­sponse to the pe­ti­tion­ers called for the EGM, Look Loy, the for­mer chair­man of the TTFA tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee, post­ed on his Face­book page re­cent­ly that: "The fact is that, Beach, Fut­sal, EC­FU (East­ern Coun­ties Foot­ball Union), SFA and VF­FOTT (Vet­er­ans Foot­ball Foun­da­tion of T&T) don't even have ten mem­bers among them. These are PA­PER or­gan­i­sa­tions that speak for peo­ple that hold of­fice in them, but col­lec­tive­ly have ten del­e­gates among them. Jokes I ain't at­tend­ing ANY meet­ing they called via a mock­ing pre­tender."

In re­sponse, one of the del­e­gates for EC­FU, Ian Prichard said on Sun­day, "I can state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the EC­FU is ful­ly func­tion­al. As a mat­ter of fact, we not on­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the last TTFA elec­tion of No­vem­ber 24, 2019 but al­so had ac­tive com­pe­ti­tion as up to the 2019 foot­ball sea­son."

He con­tin­ued, "It is the be­lief of the EC­FU Ex­ec­u­tive that the Unit­ed TTFA should at­tend the meet­ing not mere­ly to an­swer ques­tions of the mem­ber­ship but to clear the air on any am­bi­gu­i­ty sur­round­ing per­ti­nent na­tion­al foot­ball is­sues that are un­clear and in the pub­lic do­main. We be­lieve that it is im­por­tant for the Unit­ed TTFA to share with the mem­ber­ship the rea­son for their present course of ac­tion based on the fact that it seems to have been made on be­half of the as­so­ci­a­tion."

Pritchard, a for­mer Min­istry of Sports of­fi­cial added, "The great­est con­cern of the EC­FU re­gard­ing pos­si­ble FI­FA sanc­tions is the neg­a­tive con­se­quences it may have on the young foot­ballers in our re­gion. Those young foot­ballers from as far North as To­co and En­vi­rons and as far South East as Rio Claro that play this beau­ti­ful game who may not now be able to par­tic­i­pate in any lo­cal, re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al FI­FA ap­proved com­pe­ti­tions.

"If these sanc­tions oc­cur it def­i­nite­ly shat­ters the dreams of every young EC­FU foot­baller striv­ing to rep­re­sent our re­gion and those who may go on to rep­re­sent our twin-is­land re­pub­lic or de­sirous of mak­ing a ca­reer from foot­ball."

In the first in­stance, the del­e­gates, some 30 of them to date out of a max­i­mum of 47 del­e­gates, were suc­cess­ful in hav­ing the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which is head­ed by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, con­vened a meet­ing un­der Ar­ti­cle 29 of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion with two items with sev­er­al sub­sec­tions on the agen­da.

The del­e­gates want to recog­nise the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee as the ex­ec­u­tive body of the TTFA from March 17 and ac­cord­ing to FI­FA Statutes ar­ti­cle 8 and the sec­ond item, is to have the le­gal chal­lenge against FI­FA by the Unit­ed TTFA team to be with­drawn forth­with. The pe­ti­tion has list­ed how the TTFA will be at a set­back if the le­gal mat­ter is not with­drawn.

Lennox Sir­juesingh, a for­mer FI­FA ref­er­ee and in­struc­tor and the pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of VF­FOTT, told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sun­day: "VF­FOTT has been a mem­ber of the TTFA in good stand­ing since 2015, af­ter ad­vo­cat­ing for a change of the One­man­ism in gov­er­nance and its mem­bers worked on the new TTFA con­sti­tu­tion which was rat­i­fied on Ju­ly 12, 2015."

He added, "The or­gan­i­sa­tion has re­mained a mem­ber in good stand­ing and had both its del­e­gate and board mem­ber at­tend the last AGM held on No­vem­ber 24, 2019. Maybe the Look Loy-Unit­ed TTFA ex­pelled mem­bers from the TTFA. I know they have nev­er held a gen­er­al meet­ing of the mem­ber­ship since the AGM on No­vem­ber 24, 2019, not even to thank those who vot­ed for them."

Checks by Guardian Me­dia Sports through var­i­ous sources stat­ed that Beach Foot­ball, Fut­sal, the EC­FU, the South­ern FA and VF­FOTT, all par­tic­i­pat­ed with full mem­ber­ship rights in­clud­ing the rights to vote at the 2019 TTFA an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM ) elec­tion. Since then, there has been no ques­tion about their mem­ber­ship sta­tus nor has any meet­ing been called since to dis­cuss such is­sues.

The TTFA con­sti­tu­tion makes pro­vi­sions for 49 del­e­gates, how­ev­er, at the last AGM, the Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and the Coach­es As­so­ci­a­tion were deemed non-func­tion­al.

With re­gards to the T&T Women's Foot­ball (WolF) sup­port for the pe­ti­tion, Chris­tine Rose, the or­gan­i­sa­tion trea­sur­er told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sun­day: "An emer­gency meet­ing was called by the pres­i­dent Su­san Joseph-War­rick on Thurs­day and the out­come of this meet­ing re­sult­ed in the en­tire ex­ec­u­tive, in­clu­sive of the pres­i­dent, vot­ing unan­i­mous­ly against the TTFA to be banned by FI­FA."

She said, "In our meet­ing, we fur­ther dis­cussed the im­pli­ca­tions of the im­passe be­tween Unit­ed TTFA and FI­FA. We be­lieve that the case should be with­drawn from the lo­cal court and moved to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport. We be­lieve that Unit­ed TTFA team should meet or at­tend the EGM which has been called by the mem­ber­ship. So that they can lis­ten to the dif­fer­ent views of their mem­ber­ship as well as give their views be­hind the im­passe be­tween Unit­ed TTFA and FI­FA."

"In my hum­ble opin­ion, I am wor­ried that TTFA could be fac­ing sanc­tions/ban from FI­FA. Such a de­ci­sion can ad­verse­ly af­fect the foot­balling pop­u­la­tion of T&T. It would crush the dreams of the young as­pir­ing foot­ballers as they will not be able to rep­re­sent any na­tion­al team at the var­i­ous lev­els, as well as those as­pir­ing to be­come pro­fes­sion­al foot­ballers. Sports Tourism would al­so be af­fect­ed be­cause we would not be able to par­tic­i­pate in any in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, whether it be friend­ly or com­pet­i­tive. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this can ul­ti­mate­ly lead young peo­ple to a life of crime."

Mean­while, among some of the clubs and del­e­gates that have signed the pe­ti­tions seen by Guardian Me­dia Sports are - La Horquat­ta Rangers, Cen­tral FC, Po­lice, San Juan Jabloteh, AC Port-of-Spain, W Con­nec­tion, Mor­vant Cale­do­nia FC, Club San­do, De­fence Force, Queen's Park Crick­et Club, the South­ern, East­ern and Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tions; EC­FU; WolF; the Fut­sal As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T; T&T Beach Soc­cer As­so­ci­a­tion and the VF­FOTT.

On Au­gust 26, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of FI­FA Fat­ma Samoura wrote Hadad, warn­ing that TTFA would face sanc­tions if it did not with­draw the mat­ter out of the T&T High Court by Sep­tem­ber 16, which is two days be­fore FI­FA holds its Con­gress.


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