Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs), play­ers, coach­es, le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers and oth­ers in­volved in sports in T&T and the Caribbean can now ben­e­fit from a le­gal guide called the 'Com­mon­wealth, Caribbean Sports Law'.

This comes in the form of a book writ­ten by Ty­rone Mar­cus, the for­mer At­tor­ney At Law at the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs and Dr Ja­son Haynes, an­oth­er At­tor­ney-at-Law ad­mit­ted to prac­tice in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Bar­ba­dos with an in­ter­est in civ­il and com­mer­cial lit­i­ga­tion.

The duo, un­know­ing­ly, had been work­ing on the text in­di­vid­u­al­ly be­fore di­vine in­ter­ven­tion brought them to­geth­er, and led to Tues­day's launch at the Uni­ver­si­ty Inn and Cen­tre of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

Haynes, who has been work­ing out of his na­tive Bar­ba­dos told a large gath­er­ing the book was con­cep­tu­al­ized from an ob­ser­va­tion that there has been a spar­si­ty of da­ta, lit­er­a­ture and in­for­ma­tion, writ­ten from a Caribbean per­spec­tive, on the im­por­tant themes rel­a­tive to sport and the law, in the con­text of the Com­mon­wealth and the Caribbean re­gions.

The text ad­dress­es is­sues such as what con­sti­tutes a sport: The Role of Good Gov­er­nance in Sports: Sports Con­tracts: In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Rights: In­ci­dence of Vi­o­lence: Ethics and In­tegri­ty in Sports: The Le­gal Reg­u­la­tion of Drugs in Sports, as well as oth­er is­sues such dis­abil­i­ty etc.

How­ev­er, Haynes was made to delve in­to ar­gu­ments they put for­ward in his text al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, when Se­nior Coun­sell El­ton Prescott, a recog­nised tri­al lawyer of 30 years and ex­pe­ri­ence labour law and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions spe­cial­ist, ar­gued that games such as all-fours and bridge, do not fall in­to the de­f­i­n­i­tion of what a sport is.

In an ar­tic­u­late re­sponse, Haynes said the de­f­i­n­i­tion was re­searched from an as­crip­tive text, not­ing that the book chal­lenges this de­f­i­n­i­tion and called for a recon­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of how a sport is de­fined so as to in­clude games tra­di­tion­al­ly en­gaged in in the Caribbean, such as all fours and bridge.

The text al­so sought to de­fine what good gov­er­nance is in sport, and will fur­ther ex­plain why CARI­COM mem­bers failed in an at­tempt to dis­solve the for­ma­tion of the new­ly re­brand­ed Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), which re­placed the West In­dies Crick­et Team in the midst of gov­er­nance chal­lenges.

Is­sues af­fect­ing play­ers and coach­es re­lat­ing to con­tracts will al­so be dealt with, as at­tempts were al­so fo­cused on key terms be­ing used in con­tracts, as well as what amounts to a breach of con­tract. This ac­cord­ing to Haynes, has be­come crit­i­cal as more and more re­gion­al play­ers are seek­ing to mon­e­tise their ex­per­tise.

Jus­tice Adri­an Saun­ders, pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, was among many who en­dorsed the text, and in a brief speech to an au­di­ence that in­clud­ed a wide cross-sec­tion of the sport­ing and le­gal fra­ter­ni­ties, said in or­der for ath­letes to reap full so­cial and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits from the sport­ing in­dus­try, it was im­por­tant for sport­ing bod­ies in the re­gion to be gov­erned by the rule of law.

"This, in turn, re­quires the de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­able stan­dards for the prac­tice, ad­min­is­tra­tion and reg­u­la­tion of sports."