The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) yes­ter­day apol­o­gised for a se­ries of con­tra­dict­ing mes­sages con­veyed via sev­er­al press re­leas­es per­tain­ing to the con­tri­bu­tion of funds de­rived from the sale of "I Sup­port Akeem" T-shirts to the Heart of a War­rior Fund.

In an­oth­er TTFA re­lease sent yes­ter­day, this time ad­dressed from the of­fice of the TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Shel­don Phillips, fol­low­ing a meet­ing with the T-shirt pro­duced, Na­tive Spir­it, the body ac­knowl­edged its er­ror in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion af­ter orig­i­nal­ly stat­ing that all pro­ceeds from T-shirt sales will go to the Heart of a War­rior foun­da­tion.

A week ago, the TTFA dis­closed the to­tal funds which came from the sale of T-shirts as well as tick­et sales for the Akeem Adams stands. The to­tal was $72,300, of which $50,000 came from the sale of 2,000 T-shirts print­ed by Na­tive Spir­it. It was then that the TTFA stat­ed that a quar­ter of T-shirt sales would be con­tributed to the fund, which the re­main­ing $75 would go to­ward the pro­duc­tion of the T-shirts by Na­tive Spir­it. The dis­clo­sure raised ques­tions as the TTFA pre­vi­ous­ly ad­ver­tised the sale of the T-shirts stat­ing that all pro­ceeds would go to­ward a fund cre­at­ed for Adams, a 22-year-old for­mer youth and se­nior T&T in­ter­na­tion­al de­fend­er, who, fol­low­ing a se­ri­ous heart at­tack in Hun­gary last month, had the low­er part of his left leg am­pu­tat­ed.

The lo­cal foot­ball gov­ern­ing body al­so in­sist­ed, via the re­lease that it nev­er re­ceived any pro­ceeds from the arrange­ment.

Phillips yes­ter­day apol­o­gised while he ac­knowl­edged that the TTFA should have cor­rect­ed its er­ror from the on­set.

"First­ly, the TTFA is sor­ry and would like to ex­press its re­gret over any con­fu­sion caused by in­con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing the amount of the sales price di­rect­ed to the fund sup­port­ing Akeem."

It con­tin­ued, "In hind­sight, a fol­low up re­lease ex­press­ly stat­ing the amount go­ing to the fund from T-shirt sales should have been pro­duced."

"While the TTFA re­grets the un­in­tend­ed mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it is im­por­tant to state that based on third part con­fir­ma­tion of costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­duc­tion of the shirts, the do­na­tion pro­vid­ed by the T-shirt sales was ap­pro­pri­ate and we re­spect­ful­ly de­ny any claims of prof­i­teer­ing."

Phillips said the cost of each shirt ($75) was due to its "ex­cep­tion­al qual­i­ty." "In­stead of pass­ing along an item of less­er qual­i­ty, the TTFA sought to en­sure our brand would adorn items of an ex­cel­lent stan­dard."

The re­lease con­clud­ed by say­ing it would be glad to an­swer any fol­low up ques­tions at the next press con­fer­ence, which is sched­uled for Fri­day to dis­cuss mat­ters per­tain­ing to T&T's up­com­ing home and away friend­ly se­ries against Ja­maica, card­ed for No­vem­ber 15 and 19, in Mon­tego Bay and Port-of-Spain, re­spec­tive­ly.

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