Min­is­ter of Sport Brent San­cho says the threat by some T&T se­nior women's team play­ers not to board a flight bound for Cana­da yes­ter­day would have been re­alised had it not been for his in­ter­ven­tion.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, San­cho said he con­vinced the play­ers to take the flight af­ter giv­ing them the as­sur­ance that he would look in­to is­sues, some of which were made pub­lic by one of the play­ers, Ken­nya Cord­ner, who took to so­cial me­dia over the week­end in a crit­i­cal post di­rect­ed to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).

On Sat­ur­day, Cord­ner post­ed the fol­low­ing on Face­book: "So on Mon­day 6th of Ju­ly I would not be go­ing to Cana­da with­out any stipend this is ridicu­lous now I would let ppl know wat alyuh about TTFA be­cause this is not fair to us, why must the men be in com­fort while we suf­fer not any more I'm so fed up of you all treat­ing us like this no more."

Then, on Sun­day, a day be­fore the team was sched­uled to de­part for Cana­da, Cord­ner post­ed on the same fo­rum: "As I lay in my bed and think back! You know it was nev­er about the mon­ey when com­ing to play for our coun­try, we al­ways used to go and play and fight for the, but is the Con­stance (sic) dis­re­spect from the TTFA I can­not take. Few months ago we brought this coun­try to­geth­er, we change the face of women's foot­ball but yet still we are treat­ed like we are no-body why must that be?

It's un­fair to us look we have pan am games not even a prac­tice game why be­cause we not worth it? Am ask­ing you TTFA. Go­ing back to wen Coach Randy put up the Twit­ter post and you all said things would be bet­ter for the women's but yet still the lies keep com­ing smh. Ladies it's about time we stop take the dis­re­spect be­cause we are hu­man not ro­bots. I would al­ways b hap­py to rep­re­sent my coun­try, but wen we are be­ing dis­re­spect­ed I would let ppl know.

With these con­cerns, some play­ers threat­ened to boy­cott the event.San­cho said he re­ceived a call the night be­fore from one of the play­ers, which brought some of the is­sues to his at­ten­tion.He said he wants the TTFA to be "trans­par­ent and open." "They have to let us know what hap­pened."

San­cho said he could not un­der­stand what the is­sues were in terms of match fees and prepa­ra­tion for the Pan Am Games since the TTFA re­cent­ly re­ceived "Gold Cup mon­ey" from Con­ca­caf. "The fed­er­a­tion got mon­ey from Con­ca­caf for prepa­ra­tion for the Gold Cup and air­fare but we (Gov­ern­ment) are pay­ing for air­fare," San­cho said.

How­ev­er, in a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillips said the Min­is­ter may have been mis­tak­en when it came to the fig­ures. "We did not re­ceive $100,000 from Con­ca­caf (for the Gold Cup). We re­ceived around $33,000, which did go to­wards the two Pan Am teams."He said the as­so­ci­a­tion "re­ceived an ad­vance" from Con­ca­caf in the ab­sence of Min­istry sub­ven­tions which would have gone to­ward the Pan Amer­i­can Games.

In terms of the women team's prepa­ra­tion for the Games, Phillips not­ed that the on­go­ing Women's Pre­mier League (WPL) fea­tured all na­tion­al women play­ers and al­lowed them to pre­pare through a num­ber of friend­ly match­es, in­clud­ing one against a WPL XI.

The women's team is sched­uled to kick off the ac­count at the Pan Amer­i­can Games on Sat­ur­day with a clash against Ar­genti­na and will play Colom­bia and Mex­i­co on Ju­ly 14 and 18, re­spec­tive­ly, at the pre­lim­i­nary stage. The men will face Uruguay (Ju­ly 13), Paraguay (Ju­ly 17) and Mex­i­co (Ju­ly 21).