It is a bit­ter-sweet mo­ment for T&T foot­ball where sup­port seems to be split un­equal­ly in two. Now, how­ev­er, the sport's mem­ber­ship will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make things right, if this say­ing can be a re­al­i­ty at this point in time.

Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in's rul­ing to ac­cept T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his team of Joseph Sam Phillip, Su­san Joseph-War­rick, and Clynt Tay­lor as the le­git­i­mate ad­min­is­tra­tors of T&T foot­ball in­stead of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee has been em­braced by some as a tri­umph in cer­tain quar­ters, but be­ing seen as detri­men­tal in oth­ers.

Fol­low­ing Tues­day night's rul­ing, T&T's Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ref­er­enc­ing a Greek les­son from his al­ma mater Bish­op High School many years ago, said, “An­oth­er such vic­to­ry and we shall be ut­ter­ly ru­ined,” Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, 2000 years ago.

He not­ed: "Thank God I was taught some Greek His­to­ry and Latin at Bish­op High School. Oth­er­wise, I would have nev­er been able to un­der­stand that ad­ven­ture. I think we all now need to study the 2000-year events of the Pyrrhic wars to fig­ure out how it all might end. The suc­cess that comes at such a high price and at oth­er peo­ple’s ex­pense some­times re­sults in the price of the “vic­to­ry” prov­ing too cost­ly to have been worth it."

Clear­ly dis­ap­point­ed by the rul­ing of the court, the Prime Min­is­ter end­ed by say­ing: "So now Unit­ed TTFA has “won” and FI­FA has lost. The mat­ter is set­tled in the lo­cal court. We are now free of the “colo­nial” FI­FA. We, boys and girls, men and women, are free to play by our­selves and against our­selves be­cause no­body will be al­lowed to play with or against us. Oh. That’s it! I fi­nal­ly un­der­stand it. That means we can nev­er lose and will al­ways win be­cause we will on­ly be play­ing by our­selves."

The Prime Min­is­ter was not stand­ing alone with his dis­course and was joined by Brent San­cho, the act­ing T&T Pro League chair­man who will be among the de­cid­ing mem­bers, and Jame­son Rigues, a vice pres­i­dent at the T&T Su­per League Board.

On Wednes­day, Guardian Me­dia Sports made sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Wal­lace yes­ter­day but were un­suc­cess­ful.

How­ev­er, both Rigues and San­cho are hop­ing for Jus­tice Gob­in's rul­ing to be over­turned when the Court of Ap­peal ad­ju­di­cates on the mat­ter on Mon­day. FI­FA agreed to ap­peal a rul­ing by Gob­in for the lo­cal court to be the ju­ris­dic­tion to set­tle the case but lat­er re­fused to file a de­fence. Ac­cord­ing to both ad­min­is­tra­tors, while they un­der­stand the rea­sons for such a rul­ing, an over­turn­ing of it by the Ap­pel­late judges will put T&T in a bet­ter po­si­tion to ne­go­ti­ate with the FI­FA, the sport's world gov­ern­ing body, who, on Sep­tem­ber 24, sus­pend­ed the TTFA for a vi­o­la­tion of their Statutes.

An op­por­tu­ni­ty for sym­pa­thy by the FI­FA is ex­pect­ed to come soon, fol­low­ing Wal­lace's de­ci­sion to al­low the mem­ber­ship to de­cide on the way for­ward for the sport, once his group gets favour from Gob­in.

Rigues said: "The mem­ber­ship can write to the FI­FA seek­ing clar­i­ty on what is need­ed for the coun­try to be spared ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion or even ex­pect­ed ex­pul­sion. This sit­u­a­tion is hurt­ing the coun­try and if Wal­lace and his team are se­ri­ous about giv­ing the mem­ber­ship the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make the de­ci­sion, then an op­por­tu­ni­ty ex­ists for us to seek sym­pa­thy," Rigues ex­plained.

TTFA's sus­pen­sion came with con­di­tions that re-en­try in­to the FI­FA fold would re­quire drop­ping a court bat­tle in the High Court and bring­ing its (TTFA) Con­sti­tu­tion in line with FI­FA's.

On Sep­tem­ber 22 at Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) called by Wal­lace and the Unit­ed TTFA, the mem­ber­ship vot­ed (21 For, 8 Against and 3 Ab­sten­tions) to with­draw the mat­ter from the courts but the Unit­ed TTFA missed FI­FA's Sep­tem­ber 23 dead­line which re­sult­ed in T&T be­ing sus­pend­ed on Sep­tem­ber 24 un­til fur­ther no­tice.

How­ev­er, TTFA con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­pert Os­mond Down­er, Wal­lace and his lawyer Matthew Gayle said they are un­sure of what the FI­FA is re­quest­ing since the TTFA's con­sti­tu­tion had been up­dat­ed in 2015, and was ap­proved by FI­FA.

It is be­ing spec­u­lat­ed that this change in the TTFA Statutes hinges on amend­ing the Act of Par­lia­ment which is re­spon­si­ble for the in­cor­po­ra­tion of the TTFA.

Down­er said for this to be a re­al­i­ty, Wal­lace will first have to sum­mon his Board of Di­rec­tors to a meet­ing and the Board will call an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM). Though San­cho ques­tioned if the Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion would al­low the mem­ber­ship to make such a de­ci­sion, he be­lieves it would be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the mem­ber­ship to lob­by the Gov­ern­ment for any nec­es­sary changes, a call that was sup­port­ed by Rigues.