To­ba­go Unit­ed FC Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor Pe­ter Granville has as­sured the man­age­ment of the Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League that his club will be par­tic­i­pat­ing when the 2010 sea­son kicks-off de­spite fi­nan­cial chal­lenges. Ac­cord­ing to Granville, To­ba­go Unit­ed has been op­er­at­ing on small bud­gets for years. How­ev­er, the club will con­tin­ue its strug­gle at the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el with hopes of at­tract­ing sub­stan­tial spon­sor­ship in the fu­ture. "I al­ways laugh when asked if we will con­tin­ue par­tic­i­pat­ing," Granville said. "Be­cause To­ba­go Unit­ed has been present in the past sev­en years. To­ba­go Unit­ed, like some oth­er clubs, is not go­ing any­where but the Pro League." "We are con­tin­u­ing what we nor­mal­ly do. We will start our train­ing next month as we look for­ward to the up­com­ing 2010 sea­son.

"But I can ad­mit, it re­al­ly wasn't an easy feat for To­ba­go Unit­ed over the years and what is al­so ev­i­dent, is the un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion of Unit­ed Petrotrin who would not be here (this sea­son). But To­ba­go Unit­ed will con­tin­ue to press on and con­tin­ue do­ing what we are do­ing," con­tin­ued the for­mer T&T youth coach. Granville fur­ther ex­plained that a man­age­ment re­struc­ture geared at at­tract­ing spon­sor­ship is ex­pect­ed in up­com­ing weeks. "There's al­ways been one ma­jor prob­lem that's af­fect­ed us, and that's fund­ing," con­tin­ued the Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor. "And we are look­ing to change that. We are look­ing at re­struc­tur­ing our man­age­ment of the club. This should be sort­ed out in the next few weeks. "Be­cause we have a num­ber of To­bag­o­ni­ans liv­ing in Trinidad who are will­ing to come on board in terms of man­age­ment and help us get more fund­ing and so on. The prob­lem has al­ways been fund­ing and un­til we fix that, we will con­tin­ue to strug­gle," he said.

On the pitch, Granville says the in­ter­est shown by play­ers to join and re-join the club is flow­ing in. And that the club will host its open screen­ing in Feb­ru­ary to kick-start their 2010 pre-sea­son. Last sea­son, coached by Ken­ny Thomas and fea­tur­ing play­ers such as Kay­o­de McK­in­non, Ja­mal Jack, Tichard Joseph, Carey Har­ris and Richard Reynolds, To­ba­go Unit­ed fin­ished above the bot­tom of the stand­ings for the first time in its sev­en year pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ry. The club placed 10th, one ahead of Po­lice FC, with 13 points, two wins, sev­en draws and 11 loss­es. "We are hap­py in terms of what we have achieved last year," said a pleased Granville. "For the first time we came off the bot­tom and we knew that we could have done a lot bet­ter. We would have had some sev­en drawn games and would al­so take pride in say­ing that we took points from every sin­gle club ex­cept Joe Pub­lic."