A day af­ter Prison Ser­vice FC made the de­ci­sion to with­draw from Tier 1 of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL), the club at­tend­ed a meet­ing with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) Board of Di­rec­tors and am­i­ca­bly agreed to re­turn.

They are sched­uled to take the field to­day in round three of the TTPFL, along with all the oth­er teams. Club pres­i­dent Jude Gor­don de­clined to com­ment on the specifics of the arrange­ment, on­ly con­firm­ing that the team and the TTFA had reached an "am­i­ca­ble agree­ment" for their re­turn to the League.

TTFA Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards could not be reached for com­ment, and coach Dex­ter Cyrus stat­ed he is still await­ing a brief­ing on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the club's re­turn.

The team's with­draw­al stemmed from a be­lief that they were be­ing treat­ed un­fair­ly com­pared to oth­er clubs fi­nan­cial­ly.

On Thurs­day, Pris­ons' coach Dex­ter Cyrus re­vealed that the club's to­tal re­vamp of its re­cruit­ment and de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme was based pure­ly on a promise by TTFA pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards that the ser­vice teams in the League (Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice, Prison Ser­vices FC, and De­fence Force Elites) were go­ing to be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly based on their al­lot­ment of civil­ians.

Cyrus told Guardian Me­dia Sports that based on this in­for­ma­tion, Prison Ser­vice opt­ed to re­place old­er play­ers with younger, more vi­brant, non-pris­ons' play­ers. This move was in­tend­ed to pre­vent rel­e­ga­tion and en­sure the team re­mained com­pet­i­tive.

Ac­cord­ing to Cyrus, the for­mer na­tion­al strik­er turned coach, it was based on that premise that the team’s ros­ter com­prised just one play­er who was a bona fide Pris­ons' play­er, with the oth­ers be­ing civil­ians, which would have qual­i­fied them for the max­i­mum month­ly sub­ven­tion of $55,000 be­ing giv­en to all civil­ian teams for wages.

How­ev­er, the prison of­fi­cers ul­ti­mate­ly re­ceived just $18,000 month­ly, forc­ing them to seek al­ter­na­tive ini­tia­tives to pay salaries.

Af­ter Gor­don emailed TTPFL Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Yale An­toine about the mat­ter on Wednes­day, An­toine re­layed the is­sue to the TTFA Board for a res­o­lu­tion on Fri­day. An­toine in­formed Guardian Me­dia Sports that as CEO, he had pro­posed four op­tions to the board for con­sid­er­a­tion as so­lu­tions.

The first was an im­me­di­ate meet­ing on Fri­day, de­spite the be­lief that the of­fi­cers had al­ready de­cid­ed to pull out of the League. The oth­ers in­clud­ed seek­ing out a com­pet­i­tive team from Tier 2 of the TTPFL as a re­place­ment, or bring­ing in the coun­try’s Un­der-17 team, which is on the verge of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 Cham­pi­onships.

When ques­tioned about the arrange­ment for a po­ten­tial Tier 2 re­place­ment team, An­toine sim­ply said that "an arrange­ment will be made." An­toine stat­ed that at the heart of the mat­ter was the fact that ser­vice teams were on­ly recog­nised as such by the gov­ern­ment, which pays the salaries of the clubs. Any salary ad­just­ments would re­quire a Cab­i­net Note.

At present, Prison Ser­vice FC leads the 12-team stand­ings with six points fol­low­ing vic­to­ries over Cale­do­nia AIA (3-2) and FC 1976 Phoenix (4-0). To­day, they will at­tempt to main­tain their top po­si­tion when they face the un­beat­en Club San­do at the Ma­haica Sport­ing Com­plex in Point Fortin from 6 pm. The en­counter is the open­er of a dou­ble­head­er, fol­lowed by a clash be­tween Point Fortin Civic and San Juan Jabloteh from 8 pm.

To­day’s match­es

Po­lice Bar­racks, St James

Cale­do­nia AIA vs Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, 5 pm

Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice vs De­fence Force, 7 pm

At Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va

Ath­let­ic Club PoS vs FC Ea­gles, 5 pm

FC Phoenix vs MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot, 7 pm

At Ma­haica Sport­ing Com­plex

Club San­do vs Prison Ser­vices FC, 6 pm

Point Fortin Civic vs San Juan Jabloteh, 8 pm

Stand­ings

Teams*P*W*L*D*F*A*GD*P

1*Prison Ser­vice FC*2*2*0*0*7*2*5*6

2*Mis­cel­lanous Po­lice FC*2*2*0*0*6*1*5*6

3*Club San­do FC*2*2*0*0*3*0*3*6

4*Cen­tral FC Re­boot*2*1*1*0*3*3*0*3

5*Point Fortin Civic FC*2*1*1*0*3*3*0*3

6*San Juan Jabloteh*2*1*1*0*2*4*-2*3

7*De­fence Force FC*2*0*0*2*2*2*0*2

8*FC Ea­gles*2*0*1*1*2*3*-1*1

9*Ath­let­ic Club POS*2*0*1*1*0*2*-2*1

10*Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers*1*0*1*0*1*2*-1*0

11*Cale­do­nia AIA*2*0*2*0*2*5*-3*0

12*1976 FC Phoenix*1*0*1*0*0*4*-4*0