Oc­tavia E. But­ler once not­ed: “All strug­gles are es­sen­tial­ly pow­er strug­gles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will de­fine, re­fine, con­fine, de­sign? Who will dom­i­nate? All strug­gles are es­sen­tial­ly pow­er strug­gles, and most are no more in­tel­lec­tu­al than two rams knock­ing their heads to­geth­er.”

​Trinidad and To­ba­go sports are in tur­moil, and any­one who de­nies that re­al­i­ty lacks a con­science or suf­fers from se­vere de­nial—dri­ven, per­haps, by hid­den agen­das. Over the last five months, un­less you were com­plete­ly un­con­cerned with T&T sports, par­tic­u­lar­ly foot­ball, an im­pend­ing wind of dis­con­tent has been blow­ing be­tween sev­er­al key par­ties.

This tur­moil has gen­er­at­ed more ques­tions than an­swers: Is this a sim­ple per­son­al­i­ty con­flict, or are per­son­al im­ped­i­ments ac­tive­ly block­ing progress for foot­ball?

​SporTT (Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T) con­tin­ues to be thrust to the fore­front to take the heat for “all things wrong” in lo­cal sports. Truth­ful­ly, over the years, a lack of clear iden­ti­ty and pur­pose, SporTT have been their own worst en­e­my with many square pegs in round holes. Thank­ful­ly, T&T sports has oc­ca­sion­al­ly found sense amid the non­sense through crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tions. While I would love to know the cre­den­tials of many with­in SporTT, at this stage, that may be the least of all evils in some sports ad­min­is­tra­tion in T&T.

I of­ten be­lieve that be­cause SporTT is so eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble, it be­comes an easy scape­goat—thrown in­to the line of fire to dis­tract from the re­al prob­lem and pos­si­ble so­lu­tion. Some sug­gest they are be­ing used as pawns but that is still un­der the mi­cro­scope..

​So to­day, I must ask: Is there a per­son­al vendet­ta or bad blood be­tween the Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts, and the pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), Kieron Ed­wards? Ex­am­in­ing the re­cent ac­ri­mo­ny in lo­cal foot­ball sug­gests a fun­da­men­tal clash in think­ing, pref­er­ences, or pri­or­i­ties be­tween them.

​Whether this spec­u­la­tion is true or not, foot­ball is be­ing af­fect­ed in a neg­a­tive way, and that needs to be ad­dressed ur­gent­ly. I am not speak­ing of putting a plas­ter on the sore by al­low­ing SporTT to be the mid­dle­man. That ap­proach is un­fair to foot­ball, the coun­try, and the SporTT Board of Di­rec­tors, who have been in place for less than a year.

We can­not con­tin­ue to run foot­ball this way, with what ap­pears to be a bat­tle of in­di­vid­u­als and their own ver­sions of the truth to var­i­ous ques­tion­able sources. Thank­ful­ly, sen­si­ble ob­servers pre­fer to hear all sides of the sto­ry. But for cit­i­zens who gen­uine­ly care about sports, the proof is al­ways -see­ing is be­liev­ing. Sad­ly, hard-work­ing per­sons on the ground that are dragged out to speak and have to come up with con­vo­lut­ed an­swers.

There­fore, what is need­ed to al­le­vi­ate any such ques­tions of one-up­man­ship by ei­ther Watts or Ed­wards is com­mon ground. We (peo­ple of T&T) need to be cer­tain that they can both work to­geth­er, or the way for­ward for foot­ball will be back­wards steps and not good for our play­ers or the coun­try.

Every­one needs to be as­sured and con­vinced that pres­i­dent Ed­wards is not seek­ing to un­der­mine Min­is­ter Watts by go­ing above him for as­sis­tance be­cause he be­lieves Watts is an ob­struc­tion­ist!! Or that Min­is­ter Watts is not seek­ing to force pres­i­dent Ed­wards out by en­sur­ing that T&T foot­ball is brought to an abrupt end both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly! These are crit­i­cal points that, if they have any minute sem­blance of truth, would spell dis­as­ter for T&T foot­ball. Oth­ers (those that tru­ly care about T&T foot­ball and not them­selves) may think dif­fer­ent­ly or have more ques­tions for both men.

This leads di­rect­ly to those in T&T whose goal is to ru­in our foot­ball be­cause they are no longer rel­e­vant or in any po­si­tion of pow­er again, as well as those who-like “Tweety Bird”-are in­tent on spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion un­der the guise of sin­cer­i­ty; how­ev­er, it ap­pears that the open-mind­ed men and women of this coun­try will not fall for this mal­con­tent un­der their false pre­tence of con­cern, rather than fair and bal­anced judge­ment.

I would there­fore sug­gest that, as has seemed ap­par­ent to some and doubt­ful to oth­ers, both Min­is­ter Watts and pres­i­dent Ed­wards come to­geth­er, and if they need an in­ter­me­di­ary, there is none bet­ter po­si­tioned than the cur­rent Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary of Sports and out­spo­ken for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain David Nakhid.

Sun­day at Catholic Mass in Curepe, the main read­ing was on a ques­tion from Pe­ter to Je­sus (Matthew 18.21)- Pe­ter asked, “Lord, how of­ten shall my broth­er sin against me and I for­give him? Up to sev­en times?

(Matthew 18.22), Je­sus replied, “I do not say to you, up to sev­en times, but up to 70 times sev­en.”

So, I say to both the Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts and pres­i­dent of TTFA, Kieron Ed­wards, if ei­ther or both have been wrong by one an­oth­er, it is time to for­give, even if you both or ei­ther can­not for­get, in the in­ter­est of foot­ball in our beloved coun­try.