It will be a day of reck­on­ing for T&T when it comes to foot­ball.

Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in will on Tues­day de­liv­er a rul­ing on whether the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), which is be­ing led by pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his group of vice pres­i­dents Joseph Sam Phillip and Clynt Tay­lor, will be the le­git­i­mate man­agers of foot­ball in T&T. How­ev­er, it is un­like­ly to ease the pain of a FI­FA sus­pen­sion as well as a re­turn to the fold of the FI­FA mem­ber­ship for the TTFA.

With FI­FA pulling out of the court bat­tle, spec­u­la­tions are ripe for Gob­in to rule in favour of the TTFA. If this hap­pens, Wal­lace said he will put in­to the hands of the gen­er­al foot­ball mem­ber­ship, the fu­ture of the sport via an Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM).

The mem­ber­ship has twice be­fore made it clear they de­sire to drop the court bat­tles and avoid a sus­pen­sion, which is now un­achiev­able.

FI­FA hand­ed the TTFA a sus­pen­sion on Re­pub­lic Day (Sep­tem­ber 24) for vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes, with a con­di­tion that the bring its Statutes in line with theirs (FI­FA) to re­join the FI­FA mem­ber­ship. This re­quest though has been eas­i­er said than done, as lawyers, foot­ball ex­perts and the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty con­fused with the re­quest.

TTFA At­tor­ney Matthew Gayle said he is un­sure of what the FI­FA is ask­ing for since the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion and statutes were ap­proved by the FI­FA back in 2015. Os­mond Down­er, renown TTFA con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­pert said, not on­ly doesn't he know what the FI­FA is ask­ing for, but de­scribed the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion as the best in the Caribbean.

Like Gayle, he said the TTFA statutes were ap­proved in 2014 and it is very sim­i­lar to that of the Unit­ed States and Aus­tralia. Down­er, a for­mer FI­FA ref­er­ee made it clear that no mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion can bring their statutes in line with the FI­FA's own ful­ly, but rather the FI­FA Stan­dard Statutes, which form the back­bone of an As­so­ci­a­tion, reg­u­lat­ing its ac­tiv­i­ties and how it is or­gan­ised.

As­so­ci­a­tions were asked to en­sure its statutes ful­ly com­ply with the pro­vi­sions of the FI­FA Statutes, and for this rea­son, the FI­FA com­piled the stan­dard statutes in 2001 and launched a wide-rang­ing pol­i­cy of mod­erni­sa­tion of the statutes of its mem­bers to im­prove the gov­er­nance of foot­ball in each coun­try, as well as to strength­en the prin­ci­ples con­tained in the FI­FA Statutes.

Fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion, Wal­lace and his team or­dered their at­tor­ney to re­sume the court bat­tle it had with the FI­FA, and al­so sought to file a chal­lenge against the sus­pen­sion in the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land.

Un­der the or­ders of Wal­lace, the TTFA at­tor­neys al­so filed an In­junc­tive Re­lief in the CAS, which would al­low the coun­try to par­tic­i­pate at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup. But even if these mat­ters are dropped it is un­cer­tain if TT will be a mem­ber of the FI­FA again with the re­quest for its statutes to mir­ror that of the sport's world gov­ern­ing body.