An­drew Gioan­net­ti

"Let me not try to ren­o­vate any­thing, but rather break down and re­build."

Pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee, in a con­tin­ued ef­fort to re­store con­fi­dence in the new-look T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), made his in­ten­tion clear, which is for the as­so­ci­a­tion to cre­ate a prop­er busi­ness mod­ule, while it re­builds con­fi­dence from the T&T foot­ball pub­lic, some­thing he says was lost by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Tim Kee, an in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive and busi­ness­man, was the fea­ture speak­er at the Trinidad Union Club's Speak­er Se­ries, which con­tin­ued on the club, in Nicholas Tow­ers, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Tim Kee, who was elect­ed TTFA pres­i­dent un­op­posed last No­vem­ber, fo­cused di­rect­ly on the steps cur­rent­ly be­ing tak­en to re­form and de­vel­op the state of foot­ball in T&T, while he ex­plained the sig­nif­i­cant leaps made since his elec­tion. Thus far, the as­so­ci­a­tion has seen a re­brand­ing via the re­vert­ing from the for­mer T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion to the TTFA, as well as the launch of a new lo­go. The TTFA al­so re­cent­ly launched a new kit for all of its teams, from the na­tion­al se­nior women's team, to the beach soc­cer team, to the un­der-15 na­tion­al team, in a part­ner­ship with Span­ish brand Jo­ma.

In the run up to his elec­tion, Tim Kee cam­paigned on the need to re­store con­fi­dence from the foot­ball pub­lic to the new ex­ec­u­tive, stress­ing that foot­ball be­longs to the coun­try and to the play­ers and not the as­so­ci­a­tion. De­spite the with­draw­al of his ini­tial chal­lenger, Col­in Mur­ray, Tim Kee main­tained his cam­paign di­rec­tive all the way through to his maid­en speech, when he made it clear that ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy were need­ed for cor­po­rate and pri­vate part­ners, as well as the Gov­ern­ment to be­gin, once again, to in­vest in na­tion­al foot­ball.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Tim Kee said up­on his elec­tion, his ini­tial change was that in the as­so­ci­a­tion's hu­man re­sources. "I em­pha­sised who I want­ed to come join me should be brighter than I am, and smarter than I am, and that was where my jour­ney start­ed.

"There will be cul­tur­al chal­lenges, be­cause you're talk­ing about a cul­ture that ex­ist­ed for many years, and, there­fore, we had to start work­ing with the younger peo­ple."

Now, in­clud­ed in the as­so­ci­a­tion's new man­date is the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ballers in pri­ma­ry schools, from the un­der-six to the un­der-12 age brack­ets. Since Jan­u­ary, the TTFA has em­barked on a se­ries of cours­es in which 150 pri­ma­ry school teach­ers were in­struct­ed. It is the ide­al sce­nario where the young charges are in­volved both in aca­d­e­mics and foot­ball, where it re­lat­ed to the de­vel­op­ment of an all-round­ed ath­lete, who may wish to earn foot­ball schol­ar­ships.

There is al­so the re­cent­ly-an­nounced in­de­pen­dent re­form com­mit­tee, an idea which he re­layed dur­ing a meet­ing he had with the Fi­fa pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter and the head of ad­min­is­tra­tions in a quest for help for the cash-strapped or­gan­i­sa­tion, in an at­tempt to set­tle out­stand­ing debts, which he in­her­it­ed.

"I need to have some­thing that will win back con­fi­dence from our foot­ball-lov­ing peo­ple and there was a rec­om­men­da­tion for a in­de­pen­dent re­form com­mis­sion, which I then rec­om­mend­ed and sug­gest­ed. They asked, and I said that com­mis­sion will con­sist of lu­mi­nar­ies; peo­ple who are re­spect­ed in our so­ci­ety and trust­ed, each of whom should come from a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline."

The com­mit­tee is head­ed by Raoul John, part­ner in charge of KP­MG in Trinidad. KP­MG is an au­dit­ing firm, which has an on­go­ing part­ner­ship with the TTFA. Oth­er mem­bers in­clude se­nior coun­sel Leslie Prescott, T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Sha­ka His­lop, jour­nal­ist Sheila Ram­per­sad, for­mer West In­dies (crick­et) Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine and for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller Patrick Ray­mond.

Tim Kee said: "You would get ad­vice from well-wish­ing friends who would say don't bring that man here be­cause he gave the WI Crick­et Board some prob­lems. I thought and in­sist­ed that we have some­body like that, ob­jec­tive and look af­ter play­ers' wel­fare. I did not want at the end of the day when the com­mis­sion came for­ward with the rec­om­men­da­tions that the play­ers wel­fare was not at­tend­ed (to)."

Tim Kee said among oth­er cur­rent en­deav­ours be­ing ex­e­cut­ed by the TTFA are the launch­ing of a state-of-the-art Web site and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of thou­sands of foot­balls to grass­root com­mu­ni­ties.

The Web site is ex­pect­ed to be launched with­in the next month, while the foot­balls, which are in­de­struc­tible, are to be giv­en to am­a­teur clubs and chil­dren with­in less for­tu­nate com­mu­ni­ties. They were pro­vid­ed by Chevro­let USA, via US-based for­mer T&T na­tion­al stand­out Lin­coln Phillips, who is the fa­ther of the TTFA's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillips.