The T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion has cit­ed poor re­la­tions be­tween its ex­ec­u­tive and the se­nior man­age­r­i­al staff of the ‘Ca­lyp­so Girls’ net­ball team coach Kem­ba Dun­can, and man­ag­er Ashelle Legall for the sack­ing of the duo de­spite the team’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to next year’s 2023 Net­ball World Cup spot sched­uled for Ju­ly 28 to Au­gust 6 in Cape Town, South Africa, as win­ners of the Amer­i­c­as Net­ball World Cup qual­i­fiers in Ja­maica re­cent­ly.

The re­lease stat­ed: In South Africa, for­mer World Cham­pi­ons, T&T will come up against New Zealand, Ugan­da, and Sin­ga­pore in Pool D while Aus­tralia, Ton­ga, Zim­bab­we and Fi­ji are in Pool A; Eng­land, Malawi, Scot­land, and Bar­ba­dos are in Pool B, and Ja­maica, South Africa, Wales and Scot­land make up Pool C.

Dun­can was named as an as­sis­tant coach to Althea Mc Collin in May last year, but in Jan­u­ary she was el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion of in­ter­im head coach af­ter Mc Collin va­cat­ed the po­si­tion.

Dur­ing her time in charge of the team, Dun­can guid­ed the ‘Ca­lyp­so Girls’ to an 11th-placed fin­ish with one from six out­ings at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land in Au­gust, be­fore she guid­ed the team through the Amer­i­c­as qual­i­fiers and a spot at the next Net­ball World Cup.

How­ev­er, a few weeks af­ter the team re­turned home, Dun­can, along with Legall was re­lieved of their du­ties with­in the T&TNA stat­ing that a state­ment would be made soon as to the rea­sons for bring­ing an ear­ly end to the coach­ing staff’s time at the helm.

Via a press re­lease on Thurs­day evening re­gard­ing the re­lease of the man­ag­er and as­sis­tant coach/in­ter­im coach of the se­nior na­tion­al net­ball team du­ties last month, the T&TNA first stat­ed it has em­braced a new strate­gic di­rec­tion which is de­signed to in­crease par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sport and cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of net­ball.

TTNA aims to re­claim the game

The re­lease said, The as­so­ci­a­tion’s over­ar­ch­ing man­date is to Re­claim the Game. Pur­suant to the T&TNA’s Con­sti­tu­tion, ‘The As­so­ci­a­tion shall be gov­erned by the Gen­er­al Coun­cil (Coun­cil), com­pris­ing the Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cers, to­geth­er with three (3) rep­re­sen­ta­tives from each af­fil­i­at­ed league or or­gan­i­sa­tion, and the con­venors of each com­mit­tee.’

‘The Gen­er­al Coun­cil has the pow­er to do all such acts as it may deem nec­es­sary for the ben­e­fit of the As­so­ci­a­tion.’

Con­se­quent­ly, at its Coun­cil Meet­ing of 12th No­vem­ber 2022, in ac­cor­dance with the pow­ers of the Coun­cil en­shrined in the T&TNA’s Con­sti­tu­tion, a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion was tak­en by Coun­cil, that the T&TNA’s en­gage­ment of the Man­ag­er and As­sis­tant Coach/In­ter­im Coach (as they then were) of the Se­nior Na­tion­al Net­ball Team should be ter­mi­nat­ed.

The de­ci­sion made by the Coun­cil and which was ini­ti­at­ed by its con­sid­er­a­tion of re­ports sub­mit­ted by mem­bers of the Tech­ni­cal Team, in­clud­ing the said Man­ag­er and As­sis­tant Coach/In­ter­im Coach, fol­low­ing the Net­ball World Cup Qual­i­fiers re­cent­ly con­clud­ed in Ja­maica, rep­re­sent­ed a cli­max of pro­gres­sive­ly poor re­la­tions, be­tween the T&TNA and the Man­ag­er and As­sis­tant Coach/In­ter­im Coach.

No­tably, pri­or to the Coun­cil meet­ing of No­vem­ber 12, 2022, both the Man­ag­er and As­sis­tant Coach/In­ter­im Coach were de­briefed on their re­ports and giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard, on what tran­spired dur­ing both tour­na­ments.

Up­on the T&TNA’s en­gage­ment of the Man­ag­er and As­sis­tant Coach/In­ter­im Coach they were in­ter­viewed, ap­point­ed and af­ford­ed guid­ance on the re­quire­ments of their roles and func­tions.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, over­sight was pro­vid­ed to mon­i­tor the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Team and Tech­ni­cal Staff, to en­sure com­pli­ance with the T&TNA’s strate­gic goals and to ad­dress chal­lenges be­ing faced.

Meet­ings with the man­ag­er
to re­view chal­lenges

With re­spect to the Man­ag­er, month­ly meet­ings were held with her for the ben­e­fit of the Team’s per­for­mance and ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing and served to re­view ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges, ad­dress con­cerns and pro­vide in­for­ma­tion.

Apart from the stan­dard month­ly meet­ings held with the man­ag­er, con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the form of zoom meet­ings, ad-hoc in-per­son meet­ings, emails, tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions and What­sApp mes­sages were all fa­cil­i­tat­ed, in an ef­fort to en­sure ad­e­quate sup­port was pro­vid­ed to her on an on­go­ing ba­sis.

Nev­er­the­less, there was a break­down of re­la­tions be­tween the T&TNA and the Man­ag­er. Month­ly re­ports were sub­mit­ted by the Man­ag­er and writ­ten re­spons­es were pro­vid­ed by the T&TNA pro­vid­ing ad­vice, guid­ance and rec­om­men­da­tions on ac­tions to be tak­en by the Man­ag­er. How­ev­er, there was no mean­ing­ful ac­cep­tance of the ad­vice, guid­ance and rec­om­men­da­tions, as be­came ev­i­dent in the Man­ag­er’s sub­se­quent re­ports or ac­tions.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, some of the re­quests made by the Man­ag­er and some of her re­spons­es to the T&TNA in the re­ports were un­sat­is­fac­to­ry. Fur­ther­more, notwith­stand­ing the fact that the Man­ag­er was ful­ly aware of T&TNA’s fi­nan­cial con­straints and her oblig­a­tion as the man­ag­er, to find in­no­v­a­tive ways to as­sist the Team to ame­lio­rate some of these chal­lenges, she rarely of­fered rec­om­men­da­tions or un­der­took ac­tiv­i­ties to that end. Dur­ing the afore­men­tioned month­ly meet­ings and via writ­ten feed­back to the Man­ag­er on the month­ly re­ports, con­tin­u­ous guid­ance was pro­vid­ed with re­spect to ar­eas where im­prove­ment was re­quired of her, in re­la­tion to com­pli­ance with es­tab­lished stan­dards and process­es, as well as T&TNA poli­cies.

The role and func­tion of the Man­ag­er ob­lig­at­ed her to en­sure com­pli­ance with es­tab­lished stan­dards of con­duct ex­pect­ed of na­tion­al teams par­tic­i­pat­ing at tour­na­ments. Of par­tic­u­lar note, the man­ag­er failed to recog­nise the im­por­tance of na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion at a once-in-a-life­time, mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion.

Dur­ing the Com­mon­wealth Games re­cent­ly held in Birm­ing­ham, the Se­nior Na­tion­al Net­ball Team ab­sent­ed it­self from the of­fi­cial open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, miss­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Team to dis­play na­tion­al pride on the world stage.

The T&TNA was not in­formed of the Team’s ab­sence by the man­ag­er in her re­port on that tour­na­ment or oth­er­wise and was not made aware of that fact un­til the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Team miss­ing an­oth­er of­fi­cial open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of a ma­jor tour­na­ment arose.

The Se­nior Na­tion­al Net­ball Team would have al­so missed the of­fi­cial open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Net­ball World Cup Qual­i­fiers, had it not been for the in­ter­ven­tion of a mem­ber of the Lo­cal Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee, re­quest­ing the T&TNA to in­ter­vene.

The T&TNA formed the opin­ion that the Man­ag­er flout­ed TTNA poli­cies, guide­lines and in­struc­tions, and on oc­ca­sion, treat­ed ar­bi­trar­i­ly with play­er is­sues as they arose.

Man­ag­er’s fail­ures to
en­force TTNA poli­cies

The Man­ag­er at times failed to in­form and guide play­ers re­gard­ing the T&TNA’s pol­i­cy with re­spect to the process gov­ern­ing in­jured play­ers. This led to de­lays in the play­ers’ re­cov­ery process and cre­at­ed fi­nan­cial is­sues for af­fect­ed play­ers.

This is just one ex­am­ple of the Man­ag­er fail­ing to demon­strate a con­sis­tent com­mit­ment to the en­force­ment of T&TNA’s poli­cies and pro­ce­dures, de­spite be­ing aware of the same.

Notwith­stand­ing at­tempts to men­tor the Man­ag­er and in­form her of her short­com­ings, there was no mea­sur­able im­prove­ment in her per­for­mance. Over time, her be­hav­iour led to a com­plete break­down of trust and con­fi­dence be­tween her­self and the T&TNA.

Dur­ing the Coach’s tenure with the T&TNA, she pub­licly dis­played ag­gres­sion to­wards a se­nior T&TNA of­fi­cial at a well-at­tend­ed lo­cal event. Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing that event, at­tempts were made by a group of se­nior T&TNA and Tech­ni­cal of­fi­cials to meet with the coach, to as­cer­tain what led to her out­burst and al­so to pro­vide coun­selling, men­tor­ship, ad­vice and guid­ance, on the stan­dard of con­duct ex­pect­ed of her. Ef­forts to con­duct a dis­cus­sion of the event were aban­doned on the day of the event, due to the Coach’s un­avail­abil­i­ty.

Sub­se­quent­ly, a meet­ing was held to ad­dress the mat­ter. De­spite coun­selling, there was no ob­served or mea­sur­able change in her con­duct, which led to a per­ma­nent frac­ture of re­la­tions be­tween her­self and the T&TNA.

There was no in­di­ca­tion that there would be an im­prove­ment in the Coach’s con­duct, at­ti­tude or be­hav­iour. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, re­quests for meet­ings and/or in­for­ma­tion from the Coach was met with un­due de­lays, un­sat­is­fied com­mit­ments to meet or in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­spons­es.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances out­lined above, it was ev­i­dent that the T&TNA’s new strate­gic di­rec­tion to in­crease par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sport and cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of net­ball, could not be at­tained or ad­vanced, should the Man­ag­er and As­sis­tant Coach/In­ter­im Coach have been re­tained in those po­si­tions, the re­lease end­ed.