An­dre Bap­tise

Whether or not it is hu­man er­ror, neg­li­gence or sim­ply for­get­ful­ness, some­thing is wrong with the way women are treat­ed.

But in this case I am re­fer­ring to Women in Sports, not in oth­er spheres of life, and in par­tic­u­lar for the pur­pose of those who wish to read fur­ther, women in foot­ball in T&T.

The fact, that since De­cem­ber 2, 2014, our na­tion­al women's team has not played a sin­gle match to this day, is not on­ly un­for­giv­able, but a pos­si­ble sign of dis­en­gage­ment by those in au­thor­i­ty, who if not for this team would have been as un­pop­u­lar as their pre­de­ces­sors. Be­cause let me ex­plain for the in­fi­nite time to all Sports Ad­min­is­tra­tors in all spheres of this coun­try, that peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in the sports­men and sports­women and not in them. If they re­main silent and do their work ef­fi­cient­ly, they will have achieved and one day be recog­nised.

In the case of the women, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion stat­ed that since the young ladies lost that game in De­cem­ber to Ecuador 0-1, there are no coun­tries in­ter­est­ed in play­ing our na­tion­al team any­more.

How­ev­er, the women foot­ballers are flat­ly deny­ing that is true and in­stead be­lieve that not enough ef­fort was made by the TTFA to en­sure that this could have oc­curred. It is dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that af­ter such a suc­cess­ful run, that no team would be in­ter­est­ed in play­ing this coun­try ahead of the World Cup in Cana­da.

And if the TTFA were smart and giv­en the ap­par­ent busi­ness suc­cess of the game in De­cem­ber, they would have found a way through con­nec­tions to play a game in front of a still ador­ing crowd when the mo­men­tum was there for all to wit­ness, in­stead to most, it ap­pears as if they have turned their backs once again on women's foot­ball.

We all know the prob­lems the team ex­pe­ri­enced in 2014 and when you lis­ten to the cap­tain Maylee At­tin-John­son talk from the heart again about the fact, that of­fi­cials ba­si­cal­ly at one time told her, that the em­pha­sis has to be on men's foot­ball, be­cause that is the flag bear­er, you can imag­ine the pas­sion and dri­ve in our women when they heard this male dom­i­nat­ed TTFA state these words.

How­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion at the mo­ment that again has the TTFA and women's foot­ball at log­ger­heads in­volves the Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships in Cana­da, where a men's team was named some 10 days ago and names right­ful­ly sub­mit­ted to the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee. How­ev­er no team was an­nounced or pub­lished or re­leased to the me­dia on a women's team for the same event with the same dead­lines.

On i95.5fm, I sports on Thurs­day, we spoke with Maylee At­tin-John­son, who says she knows that a team is go­ing, but no team has been an­nounced to her or any of the play­ers and it was just in line with that knowl­edge that At­tin John­son and Akhela Mol­lon de­cid­ed to call some play­ers to prac­tices.

There is not even a coach as yet for the women's team for these Cham­pi­onships, with ap­par­ent­ly the TTFA in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Randy Wal­drum. There is just too much un­cer­tain­ly, and this breathes doubt and de­spair and can lead to more ques­tions.

Why is there so much se­cre­cy over the nam­ing of a team , over the sit­u­a­tion with a coach, it is this ap­par­ent un­will­ing­ness to be open and trans­par­ent that has af­fect­ed the Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion in the past and un­less they fix this prob­lem, quick­ly , they are head­ing down the same road.

As a fol­low up to all of this on Sat­ur­day on Is­ports, the Pres­i­dent of the TTOC, Bri­an Lewis con­firmed, that a team of ladies for the Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships had been re­ceived from the TTFA. So then, one is forced to ques­tion, why the need for all of this se­cre­cy and this non-dis­clo­sure by the TTFA. Is it that Shaun Fuentes for­got to is­sue this in­for­ma­tion? Or was he told not to do so?