The new T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League is fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a shut­down via the High Court if the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion/Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee does not re­spond to pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter by Matthew GW Gayle, Bar­ris­ter and At­tor­ney-at-Law, who is rep­re­sent­ing for­mer foot­baller turn ad­min­is­tra­tor Dami­an Prescod by May 1.

The renown sports at­tor­ney, has is­sued two pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters be­fore, (Au­gust 19 2021 and Au­gust 22, 2022) sent what they de­scribed as their third and fi­nal warn­ing let­ter be­fore ac­tion is tak­en, to de­ter­mine the right­ful own­er of T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League project, as well as com­pen­sa­tion.

Prescod played for Mal­abar foot­ball team - Drum­mers FC back in 1992/93 as a de­fend­er be­fore tran­si­tion­ing to foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion where he de­cid­ed to em­bark on a project called the ‘Em­pire of Dreams’ that would be of ben­e­fit to the na­tion as a whole.

He told Guardian Me­dia Sports on April 20, that he dealt specif­i­cal­ly with Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the TTFA An­ton Corneal, who gave him the as­sur­ance ver­bal­ly that his project would be im­ple­ment­ed and he would be recog­nised for it.

Matthew GW Gayle in their let­ter to Corneal and the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion said: “My Client is a com­pa­ny pri­mar­i­ly en­gaged in the cre­ation of a unique Soc­cer League built on a Pub­lic-Pri­vate-Part­ner­ship Mod­el (‘PPP Mod­el’) to en­sure sus­tain­abil­i­ty cen­tred around young ath­letes and their com­mu­ni­ty in the Caribbean to­wards a na­tion­al lev­el.”

“The PPP Mod­el al­lows for the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ments and spon­sors to get in­volved dur­ing the en­tire re­cruit­ment process and dur­ing the sea­son where prof­its will be split be­tween the com­pa­ny, spon­sor­ing cor­po­rate part­ners, lo­cal and na­tion­al gov­ern­ments and the com­mu­ni­ty through youth re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes. At all ma­te­r­i­al times, you pur­port­ed to be the Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, (‘TTFA’), a gov­ern­ing cor­po­rate body of the sport of foot­ball, based in Port-of-Spain Trinidad, es­tab­lished un­der the Laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball Act. No. 17 of 1982 (‘The Act’) with reg­is­tered ad­dress at TTFA Home of Foot­ball, Cou­va Main Road, Cou­va, in the Is­land of Trinidad.”

They added fur­ther: “My Client first con­tact­ed you in or around June-Oc­to­ber 2015, there­after on a fair­ly reg­u­lar ba­sis through a se­ries of de­tailed dis­cus­sions about their con­fi­den­tial pro­pos­al and pro­vid­ed a de­tailed plan on the up­grad­ing of the TTFA (‘Em­pire of Dreams’).

This was pre­sent­ed in con­fi­dence and with a dis­claimer, ‘that no part of the plan/work should be re­pro­duced or shared with any oth­er par­ty with­out their ex­press per­mis­sion’. In or around 2019, 2020, and 2021, my Client spoke with you on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions where you gave as­sur­ances that you would per­son­al­ly ap­proach the new TTFA mem­bers, who would ‘ no doubt get be­hind such en­ter­prise.”

“ In or around the ear­ly half of 2022, my Client, hav­ing not re­ceived any re­sponse, up­dates or com­mit­ment on the Em­pire of Dreams, they pro­ceed­ed to launch their own League card­ed for in and around Oc­to­ber 2022. They em­barked up­on a heav­i­ly ad­ver­tised cam­paign with the lo­cal me­dia over the course of eight (8) weeks.” “In or around the ear­ly part of 2022, with­in four (4) weeks of that time pe­ri­od of my Client’s me­dia cam­paign, it was brought to my client’s at­ten­tion that the TTFA had be­gun pro­mot­ing the launch of a new pro­fes­sion­al league in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“ My Client as­serts that most as­pects and char­ac­ter­is­tics of the new League’s pro­pri­etary work plan were al­most iden­ti­cal to the Em­pire of Dreams which was adopt­ed and reimag­ined to suit the League’s project.”

“ My Client fur­ther avers that this project was be­ing car­ried out by you with­out any di­a­logue, con­fir­ma­tion nor any in­ten­tion that you in­tend­ed to move for­ward, to re­pro­duce and/or in­cor­po­rate any part of the Em­pire of Dreams with­out ex­press per­mis­sion.”

“ Since be­com­ing aware of your breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, My Client has at­tempt­ed on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions to plead with you to en­gage open dis­cus­sions but this has proven fu­tile.”

Robert Hadad, chair­man of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee said re­cent­ly that Corneal has had noth­ing to do for­ma­tion, struc­ture or start of the T&T Pre­mier League and not­ed that it was a pro­pos­al he re­ceived from Gio­van­ni Pavarot­ti, who was hired by the CON­CA­CAF and the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body.