A height­ened se­cu­ri­ty alert across Trinidad and To­ba­go, sparked by news of a pos­si­ble Unit­ed States at­tack on neigh­bour­ing Venezuela, led to a cas­cade of can­cel­la­tions, post­pone­ments, and de­plet­ed pro­tec­tive ser­vices sports teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in com­pe­ti­tion this week­end.

​The State One Alert re­quired in all el­i­gi­ble mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force to re­port for of­fi­cial du­ty im­me­di­ate­ly, im­pact­ing the sports com­mu­ni­ty.

The first ca­su­al­ty was this week­end’s two-day De­fence Force Rug­by Sev­ens Tour­na­ment that was sched­uled to be held at the Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas.

Al­so Fri­day, the South Zone Bas­ket­ball Com­mis­sion (SZBC) League’s Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion Fi­nal hit a road­block ahead of game two of its best-in-three se­ries. The game was ex­pect­ed to be held at the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Pleas­antville be­tween Po­lice and South­side Elite, but it was post­poned un­til fur­ther no­tice.

The Po­lice team’s of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the Com­mis­sion stat­ed: “all their play­ers have been called out for of­fi­cial du­ty.” The SZBC has since ac­knowl­edged the pub­lic’s pa­tience and is dili­gent­ly work­ing to find a new date.

​The T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL), which en­tered its sec­ond round of ac­tion at the Ari­ma Velo­drome last night, was not dras­ti­cal­ly im­pact­ed by the call of du­ty placed to the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

Ahead of their clash with Cen­tral FC, Po­lice FC head coach Todd Ryan stat­ed that no of­fi­cial or­der had been giv­en to his of­fi­cers. Mean­while, for­mer coach Wen­dell Joseph al­so told Guardian Me­dia Sports he was un­aware of his of­fi­cers be­ing pulled in the midst of the height­ened se­cu­ri­ty alert, say­ing, “I am a po­lice of­fi­cer here at home, and I have not been called.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia ob­served just two bona fide po­lice of­fi­cers on the team’s start­ing eleven as they took the field, with most of the oth­er play­ers be­ing civil­ian play­ers.

​De­fence Force FC, the reign­ing TTPFL cham­pi­on, could not con­firm if its of­fi­cers had been mo­bilised. Coach De­vorn Jorsling not­ed that while such de­ci­sions typ­i­cal­ly come from up­per man­age­ment, he had re­ceived no word pre­vent­ing his team from play­ing to­day’s match against FC Ea­gles sched­uled to kick off at 5pm at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Bal­main, Cou­va. It must be not­ed that the army/coast guard com­bi­na­tion team al­so fea­tures sev­er­al civil­ians on its ros­ter.

Guardian Me­dia posed ques­tions to the League Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Yale An­toine, say­ing, “I want­ed to find out if you all had any ad­vice re­lat­ed to the De­fence Force be­ing mo­bilised this week­end.”

An­toine re­spond­ed “Well, they didn’t ask for post­pone­ments, but there was a change in the De­fence Force man­age­ment like a few days ago, and I’ve been try­ing to get on­to this new po­si­tion to get a com­ment or a re­quest or any kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion on what they need to go through the week­end, and I haven’t got­ten any­thing yet.”

​An­toine fur­ther clar­i­fied the League’s stance on the mat­ter: “If not, then well, it con­sti­tutes force ma­jeure. If not, then per­haps we’ll just post­pone to one of those days al­lo­cat­ed for post­pone­ment.”

De­fence Force, the win­ners of the League and the First Cit­i­zens Knock Out Cup last sea­son, will play the first match of a dou­ble­head­er against Ea­gles FC, with the oth­er be­ing a clash be­tween Cale­do­nia AIA and Club San­do at 7 pm.