The ad­min­is­tra­tors of T&T foot­ball, the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which is head­ed by its chair­man Robert Hadad and com­pris­es re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano and At­tor­ney Judy Daniel, could be brac­ing for the back­lash if the Avec Sports deal is not ho­n­oured.

The four-year TT$25 mil­lion con­tracts with the Eng­lish sports­wear sup­pli­ers was signed in Jan­u­ary with the TTFA and is sched­uled to of­fi­cial­ly take ef­fect on June 1 with the first batch of uni­forms set to ar­rive in T&T.

How­ev­er, so far, the deal has fall­en through be­cause the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee ap­pears re­luc­tant to ful­fil the agree­ment.

In a Guardian Me­dia Sports sto­ry a week ago, it was re­vealed that the uni­forms which are to out­fit all the coun­try's na­tion­al teams, from youth to se­nior lev­el are ex­pect­ed in T&T on Mon­day 1 June, but the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee act­ing on the ad­vice of the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport- the FI­FA, may not ac­cept it.

FI­FA is in a le­gal bat­tle with the for­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers — for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick for its de­ci­sion to ap­point a nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee to re­place them as the ad­min­is­tra­tors of lo­cal foot­ball on March 17.

On Mon­day Wal­lace and his team took their fight to the High Court in Port-of-Spain af­ter they felt the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS), the on­ly av­enue for Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions of the FI­FA to re­ceive jus­tice, ap­peared to have been bi­ased in its han­dlings of the ar­bi­tral pro­ceed­ings be­tween the par­ties. Wal­lace's team of lawyers Dr Emir Crowne and Matthew Gayle in a six-page doc­u­ment on Mon­day said that CAS showed bla­tant bias by go­ing against the manda­to­ry pro­ce­dure of the ar­bi­tra­tion process by ask­ing them (the oust­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive) to pay the en­tire costs ($40,000 Swiss Francs or TT$277, 000) for par­ties.

Both Wal­lace and Ramesh Ramd­han, the cur­rent TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary who signed the Avec con­tract, re­fused com­ment on the deal when con­tact­ed. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that the Eng­lish sup­pli­er has al­ready pro­duced the uni­forms for its ar­rival time in T&T.

It is un­sure of the amount spend by Avec for the uni­forms but Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Ac­cord­ing to a source who is close to the de­vel­op­ment and who spoke to us on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty on Fri­day said, “Avec would want to re­trieve the monies it put out on the pro­duc­tion of the uni­forms and they would want to be paid. They have al­ready made con­tact with us.”

The source said, "It is un­der­stood that Hadad has con­cerns about the con­tract and has been seek­ing ways to get out of the con­tract. He al­ready has his hands filled with oth­er TTFA courts mat­ters such as for­mer coach Stephen Hart, and a judge­ment by the court to pay for­mer tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Kendall Walkes which has led to the liq­ui­da­tion of the TTFA ac­counts. The Com­mit­tee al­so has to deal with out­stand­ing pay­ments of salaries for the last two months and May is al­so com­ing to an end, as well as se­cur­ing the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's ac­counts to con­duct busi­ness trans­ac­tions."

From the Avec Sports deal the T&TFA will re­ceive some US$1.4 mil­lion in uni­forms, but first will be re­quired to sell £125,000 pounds (an es­ti­mat­ed TT$1.25 mil­lion or sell 7,500 repli­ca shirts and oth­er gear for the Eng­lish com­pa­ny. The prof­its from the sales will be shared 80 to 20 per cent re­spec­tive­ly to the TTFA and its dis­trib­u­tors Sports & Games.

Hadad yes­ter­day, did not re­spond to a What­sapp, ask­ing for a com­ment on the Avec deal.