Rhon­dor Dowlat

T&T's So­ca War­riors last night de­cid­ed to boy­cott tonight's CFU Caribbean Foot­ball Cup fi­nal against Ja­maica over the non-pay­ment of salaries and ar­rears, amount­ing to an es­ti­mat­ed $10 mil­lion, owed to them by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian from Ja­maica last night, skip­per Ken­wyn Jones said the de­ci­sion may very well mean this will be the last time fans will see this team.

Jones said the team, which had al­ready qual­i­fied for the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup by virtue of reach­ing the fi­nal, re­alised they were tak­ing a dras­tic mea­sure. But he said they had had enough of promis­es and lies.

"It al­ways af­fects the sit­u­a­tion and it has been go­ing on for a very long time," an up­set Jones said."We are fed up of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion mak­ing promis­es and telling a lot of un­truths. No one wants to be a part of foot­ball and we are in a po­si­tion that is not even at break­ing point. It could very well be the end of a dy­nasty be­fore it could get there."

The Eng­land-based strik­er ad­mit­ted that coach Stephen Hart was on the brink of leav­ing Ja­maica to re­turn to Cana­da with his fam­i­ly on Sun­day be­cause he was frus­trat­ed that thou­sands of dol­lars owed to him had not yet been paid.He said the play­ers and tech­ni­cal staff al­so faced the same dilem­ma, not­ing some of them had not been paid for years.

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillips con­firmed the team was owed mil­lions. He said a Cab­i­net note was passed about two weeks ago ap­prov­ing a sum of $10 mil­lion. That sum, he said, will be to pay the debt and take the So­ca War­riors through to the Gold Cup next year.

"We sent a note to Cab­i­net ex­plain­ing the sit­u­a­tion and the mil­lions of dol­lars we owed," Phillips said."We are now in the process of get­ting those funds drawn down. We were promised part last week and got noth­ing. When we en­quired we were told to­day (Mon­day) and still noth­ing."

Phillips said he was do­ing all he could to get the mon­ey to pay the team.

"We are deal­ing with a lot, in­clud­ing hav­ing a new per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Sport. We have been li­ais­ing with the min­istry for months now and hap­py that we ac­tu­al­ly got this break­through of the $10 mil­lion. Pay­ment is im­mi­nent though."

He said in 2012 they were al­ready $4 mil­lion in ar­rears to the team and the play­ers were de­spon­dent to the point that it would af­fect the fi­nal.

"Un­der­stand­ably, they are deal­ing with this for a long time but I am push­ing very hard to ad­dress this as soon as pos­si­ble."

Play­ers have bills too

But speak­ing from the team's camp in Kingston yes­ter­day, Jones said Hart has been owned mon­ey for eight months, the staff for more than eight months and the play­ers for about four years.

"That fig­ure may vary per play­er. Some are owed $30,000 and $40,000," he said."The coach has his fam­i­ly to see about, bills to pay. We, the play­ers, need pay­ment too. Most of them say they will leave and nev­er re­turn to play for T&T again be­cause of this over­bear­ing sit­u­a­tion. We tried to hold it to­geth­er but can't again."

Leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Dr Kei­th Row­ley, dur­ing a speech at the par­ty's con­ven­tion on Sun­day, raised the is­sue of the non-pay­ment of wages and lack of fund­ing for both the men's and women's foot­ball team.He said: "We could find hun­dreds of mil­lions, just so, to feed crime in Life­S­port and in­flate con­tracts to en­rich friends, but at the same time our na­tion­al women's foot­ball team is pen­ni­less in a for­eign land and the men's team have played with­out pay, match af­ter match. Have we no shame? This sim­ply can­not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue."

Ef­forts to reach TTFA pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee and Min­is­ter of Sport Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith for com­ment last night were un­suc­cess­ful as calls to their cell­phones went unan­swered and they did not re­turn mes­sages.