It was a show of to­tal sup­port for the fu­ture of T&T foot­ball yes­ter­day at a Zoom meet­ing called by Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe, as the sport's en­tire mem­ber­ship, with the ex­cep­tion of Unit­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) mem­bers William Wal­lace, Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Philip, said they were not in sup­port of the coun­try be­ing sanc­tioned by FI­FA, the sport's gov­ern­ing body.

Cud­joe said in spite of re­peat­ed calls to Wal­lace's phone on Thurs­day to get his in­volve­ment, they re­ceived no re­sponse which was un­for­tu­nate. Wal­lace has been at the fore­front of a bat­tle with FI­FA, to over­turn a de­ci­sion to ap­point a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to man­age lo­cal foot­ball, back in March 27.

But af­ter Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in gave the oust­ed mem­bers a first-round vic­to­ry on Au­gust 13 by rul­ing that the High Court in T&T will be the ju­ris­dic­tion to set­tle the dis­pute, FI­FA's sec­re­tary gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura, de­liv­ered a stern let­ter on Wednes­day, warn­ing the Unit­ed TTFA if it did not com­ply with the or­gan­i­sa­tion's Statutes, the coun­try faced se­vere sanc­tions that could see all its na­tion­al teams out of all FI­FA-sanc­tioned tour­na­ments, such as World Cup qual­i­fiers, Club Cham­pi­onships, CON­CA­CAF tour­na­ments, etc.

Cud­joe re­mind­ed the stake­hold­ers that there were far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions to come from a FI­FA ban, that was more im­por­tant than the cause be­ing fought by the quar­tet who was re­moved from of­fice on March 17 af­ter claim­ing vic­to­ry in the TTFA elec­tions in No­vem­ber, last year.

The min­is­ter said the fu­ture of the ath­letes was at stake, not­ing that we can­not af­ford to shat­ter the dreams of many young men and women who may be carv­ing out a life in the sport, al­so re­mind­ing the stake­hold­ers that the re­al pow­er lies in the hands of the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship.

“This is more than prov­ing a point, but rather what it would mean for the young peo­ple who are de­pen­dent on the sport. I was sur­prised that every­one here was not in sup­port of Wal­lace and his team, but rather the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, so now they are go­ing to ral­ly their troops,” said Min­is­ter Cud­joe.

It is un­der­stood that a pe­ti­tion is be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed with an aim of get­ting sig­na­tures of the mem­ber­ship to stop the court bat­tle of the Wal­lace team. The pe­ti­tion, Guardian Me­dia Sports learnt is al­so set to re­ceive the sig­na­ture of the Women's Foot­ball League (WoLF), whose pres­i­dent Joseph-War­rick, is a vice pres­i­dent.

Cud­joe al­so re­vealed that should the coun­try get banned by FI­FA, the gov­ern­ment would not put out as much of tax-pay­ers mon­ey to fund it, as she made a stark dif­fer­ence to the coun­try's pur­suit of World Cup glo­ry to any­thing else.

She al­so said it would be un­fair for tax-pay­ers funds to be put to­wards a foot­ball en­ti­ty that is bur­dened by debt, and re­fus­es FI­FA fi­nan­cial help through the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.